Of Fae and Fervor
by Gnom3y
Summary: The war is lost. Harry, Hermione, and Luna are hidden away, surviving but not truly living. When given the opportunity to go back and fight the war anew, the three leap at the chance, but terrible sacrifices must be made to do so. Will the trio defeat the Dark Lord and rise victorious, or will history repeat itself? Paladeus' Challenge #11. Lunar Harmony, AU, and many many bashings
1. Chapter 1: All Good Things

**A/N:** As my first story on FFN, I'm still a bit new to the GUI, so if there are upload errors, blame it on old (ok, not that old) age. This is a response to the well-known Paladeus' Challenge #11, although I've taken quite a few liberties with the specifics, so maybe consider this a story in the spirit of the challenge, rather than a direct response. Most of the important information is in the summary, but I want to go over it again here so no one's surprised at where the story goes.

First and foremost, this is a _Lunar Harmony_ story. I'm a Harmony shipper though and through, but adding Luna to an already strong pairing seems to work well, and I've done my best to write each member as an equal to the other two. If you're not a fan of either of those two relationships, I hope you'll stick around for the story but I understand if you'd rather read something else. Thanks for stopping by!

Second, but equally important, is the bashing. I'll say this right now, no-one is safe, but no-one will be singled out either. Just because a character is hammered early on doesn't necessarily mean they'll be slammed later in the story, it really just depends on how everything develops. Having said that though, you can expect everyone's favorite targets (Dumbledore and the Weasleys) to be in the mix. If you're not a fan of bashing of any form, this story might not be for you either, but again, thanks for tuning in and checking it out. It's much appreciated.

Thirdly, this is a time-travel story. You'll see a fairly heftly AU presence, and I'll be honest, it's been more than a few years since I last read the novels, so if I drop something that's not canon but is pretty common among FanFic authors, I apologize ahead of time but the disclaimer is there and I'm likely going to run with that event as written here.

Finally, this fic is rated M _for a reason_. It's gonna get dark, and not just "oh, I killed your favorite character" dark. We're talking sexual assault, regular assault, regular sex (and maybe un-regular sex?), torture, death, and copious amounts of swearing, and I've likely forgotten anything else. I won't be putting any warning at the head of the chapters, so any chapter could contain any of the above, and that includes trigger warnings. I want to be absolutely clear on one thing though; to me, rape is the most evil and despicable thing a person can do, and I've portrayed it as such. There's no glory in it, and all rapists in this story will see justice served. Just so you all are forewarned when those scenes arrive.

As for an update schedule, I've only just finished the first draft of Chapter 2, and I'm a bit of a slow writer and a perfectionist to boot, so updates may be slow in coming. I'm going to try for one every other week, but no promises there. Also, I'll try and keep the A/N's relatively short, but responses to reviews will be added at the end of each chapter, so please leave them!

Oh! I can't believe I forgot a Disclaimer. Uh, I don't own Harry Potter, which is properly for the best, really. Also, there may be ideas that I've unwittingly swiped from other fanfictions, so if I did, sorry and thanks! It's usually easier to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission, and I'm sure I'm going to fall into that more than a few times.

Thanks for tuning in! Please enjoy **Of Fae and Fervor**!

* * *

 **Chapter 1: All Good Things**

Harry Potter, emerald-eyed, raven-haired, and prophesized one, stood stoically in front of the large picture window looking out onto a balcony and down into the courtyard of Potter Manor, although calling the Castle he resided in a 'Manor' was the equivalent of calling Queen Elizabeth 'a lady of slight importance'. Below, trading spellfire with vigor and poise that would put even a Bellatrix Lestrange in her prime to shame, danced the two most important people in his entire world. One, a brown bushy-haired and chocolate eyed young woman sent a massive and varying array of colors and incantations of increasing frustration toward the other, a blue-eyed and platinum blonde who seemed to effortlessly be precisely wherever the first's spells were not.

"Luna!" the brown-haired woman shouted as a particularly nasty bright orange spell passed through the space that the other woman had been only moments before. "Stop. Moving!"

"But Mya, dear," the blonde, Luna, replied casually. "You know the wrackspurts tell me where to move next. It's not my fault you're just pointing at the wrong spot each time. Besides, it's not like I did anything to deserve this anyway."

She paused in her explanation to dodge an array of glowing red bolts of light, gracefully finding a seam where none should exist.

"Luna," Hermione growled, magic building as her opponent continued to bait her full ire. "You wrote 'Nargles were here' on the inside cover of every book in the library, and then had the gall to interrupt my night with Harry by charming every painting in the entire castle to sing 'God Save the Queen' in a chipmunk voice."

"What?" Luna stopped and looked questioningly at her accuser, a dark purple spell hesitating on the tip of her wand. "It was her birthday."

"It was _my birthday_ , Luna!" Hermione shouted pointing her wand at the offending woman, a bright green spell lighting the tip,

Harry choose at that moment, poorly, to step through the window and address the two women, firing a quick cannon-blast from his wand to alert the combatants. Unfortunately for him, both Hermione and Luna had developed razor-sharp reflexes over the decade of war the three had been fighting, and each turned toward the sound and let loose the spells they had each been holding.

Harry's eyes only had enough time to widen imperceptibly before the dark purple and bright green spells impacted his chest and his world collapsed into darkness.

* * *

 _Harry._

The ethereal voice meandered through Harry's consciousness. He opened his eyes to see, but the darkness surrounding him was complete, and he could only tell his eyes had actually opened by the physical motion itself.

 _Harry Potter._

The voice seemed to come from all sides now, louder than before, and was that a different timbre to the sound? Harry peered into the void around him and thought he could just make out a figure looming in the distance.

"Harry Potter."

This voice was different than the other two, and right behind him. He spun quickly reaching for his wand, only to find it and his holster missing. Any source of the voice, if there was one, lay hidden in the inky blackness surrounding him.

"The Fae Queen has need of your services, young Caster."

There, behind him again! Harry turned once again and struck out at the source before his eyes had even registered any presence. The figure, humanoid at the very least, dissolved into mist before reforming just out of his reach. Harry's eyebrow rose questioningly as the resolved image revealed a sharp-dressed lithe male with pure white hair, a narrow chin, longish, pointed ears, and piercing violet eyes. The figure raised a perfectly manicured eyebrow, but continued as if no aggression had occurred.

"Her Majesty Queen Lilith, Eternal Ruler of the Mortal Plane, bids you and yours to perform a favor for Her Majesty, and in return will grant each soul a boon. Should you accept, ring the Bell and utter the phrase 'I believe', and the Queen's Emissary will be sent to you."

 _Harry, wake up._

Harry looked around the darkness for the source of the new and yet familiar voice. He looked back at the messenger but saw only the void once again.

 _Harry, please wake up._

The voice seemed complex now, as if two voices spoke as one. Harry closed his eyes and willed himself to consciousness. He slowly opened them again, squinting as brown and blonde locks came into focus.

"Um, ow?" Harry winced and tried to sit as the memory of the spell impacts, along with a surge of aches and soreness, permeated his body. The memory of his visitor faded into the recesses of his mind, where it would remain hidden until summoned.

Hermione and Luna both wore guilty smirks as they looked down at their mutual lover. They glanced at each other, silently determining which should speak first. Luna pouted slightly having clearly lost the discussion and addressed the grounded male.

"We're sorry Harry. You startled us and we both acted on instinct. Um, might I suggest you avoid mirrors for the next few hours? We, um, well," Luna's smirk began growing as Hermione stifled a giggle. "I probably can't blame the Blibbering Humdingers this time."

Luna's invocation of one of her more infamous creatures, one that even she had admitted could not possibly exist under the rules of Magic and Nature, was the final straw that broke Hermione. She burst into roaring, infectious laughter and Luna quickly followed, both women falling backwards onto the floor in their mirth. Harry was not amused.

"Yes, yes," he gestured absently with his hoof. "Have a laugh at my expen–"

His hoof?! Harry raised his arms (legs?) in front of his face and stared blankly at his new eggshell-colored hooves and coarse blue hair before sighing dramatically, which only encouraged the two women's laughter that had just begun to abate.

"How long?" he asked dejectedly.

Luna and Hermione barely recovered enough to answer the question, although each giggle threatened to start the episode all over again.

"Just – _heh–_ just a couple of hours I think. * _snort_ *" Hermione managed.

"I think our spells combined," Luna added. "I never knew you to be so … magnificent, Harry."

"Oh yes," added Hermione, her grin widening and taking on a predatory glint, "although we may run into some issues, dear Luna. If I recall my Care lessons correctly, our … _lack of virtue_ … may prevent us from approaching him in the near future."

Harry's brain worked overtime grasping at the tidbits of information the two women fed him. Magnificent – hooves – blue hair – _virtue?_ What could they … no, they didn't. They couldn't!

Harry gingerly lifted his hoof to his forehead and was met with a heartwrenching _clunk_.

"A Unicorn. A bloody blue-haired Unicorn," he deadpanned. Harry made to stand, but the awkwardness of the hooves coupled with the fatigue of the forced transfiguration forced him forward, where he made an unmistakable _clackclack_ on striking the stone floor. "Why don't you just go all the way and add a rainbow tail while you're at it?"

"What a wonderful idea, Harry!" Luna said brightly, and waved her wand at the unfortunate male.

"No, wait, I wasn't –"

Harry felt the magic wash over him before he could properly protest. He looked back and saw his sparkling rainbow tail swish back and forth. Hermione lost her composure once again and Harry looked at her forlornly before collapsing on his side and curling up into a ball.

"Wake me when it's gone, please," he pleaded as he closed his eyes and attempted to sleep the horrifying experience away.

* * *

Still giggling, Hermione and Luna rose and stepped past the curled form of their transfigured lover, making their way toward the Potter Library. Early in the three's cohabitation, Luna had claimed the Library as her Domain, much to both Harry's and Hermione's surprise. Upon further reflection, however, the younger Ravenclaw seemed to fit well among the formerly dusty tomes, more at home than Hermione could ever be. They had barely stepped into the room before a bell rang softly, its tone penetrating every room and space in the castle.

"Oh! More visitors!" cried Luna.

Casting a quick _Tempus_ with a flick of her wrist, Hermione inspected the timing of the toll.

"They're a few days late. Maybe they're learning that we don't want to be found. It's probably for the best anyway, since Harry – heh – is rather indisposed." Hermione commented.

"Come on!" Luna grasped Hermione's hand roughly and made to drag the brunette back the way they had come and toward a flight of stairs. "Hurry! I missed it last time, and I do so enjoy watching their faces."

Hermione was well aware of their intended destination, but allowed herself to be led anyway. Luna had seen enough hardship in her short lifetime and, if she was being honest with herself, Hermione took more than a bit of enjoyment herself in greeting their quarterly 'visitors'.

"Tilsy?" Hermione asked as she followed/was drug by the skipping blonde.

With a sharp _pop_ , a young female house elf appeared dressed in a well-fitted maid's outfit, a single tawny flower atop a silver and black checkered shield, the House of Potter crest, prominently featured on the right breast.

"Yes, Mistress Mynee?" the house elf, Tilsy, answered, giving the two witches a small curtsy. Realizing that her mistresses were quickly receding, Tilsy bounced forward, closing the distance between them.

"Tilsy. Please – ugh –" Hermione pulled back on Luna's hand, slowing her enough that she could properly address the house elf. "Tilsy, would you please prepare the Landing for Luna and I to receive our guests? We're cutting it a bit short today."

"Of course, Mistress Mynee." Tilsy replied, and with another curtsy, _pop_ -ed away.

It only took a few minutes to reach the Landing, but by that point Hermione had gotten Luna to release her hand, color slowly returning to the appendage.

The Landing, as Hermione had unwittingly dubbed it after comparing it to a no-maj Helicopter landing pad, was found atop the northern most tower in the castle. The battlements had been removed, and a runic array shaped like a lady's hand fan with the point facing the approaching stairwell and the arc facing north had been carved delicately into the stonework and filled with molten gold laced with thirteen drops of blood from each of the trio. It was quite a bit of work, and likely would have been worth a Runic Mastery for Hermione had the education system not collapsed years ago.

Tilsy had done a wonderful job in preparing the Landing. Two wicker no-maj lounge chairs with thin paisley cushions rested just off the point of the array, and each had a small white table upon which rested a pair of oversized sunglasses and a glass with a blended drink and small umbrella, a white Piña Colada for Hermione, and a yellow-orange Mai Tai for Luna. The women had only just settled in when the array began to throb with a bright aqua light, each pulse arriving slightly faster than the first.

"Oh goody! We didn't miss it," Luna excitedly exclaimed, sunglasses upside-down and slightly askew.

"I didn't think we would, _ma petite lune_ ," Hermione sighed as she relaxed into the chair, sipping on her cocktail. "Any bets on the opening line?"

Luna turned and looked at her for a moment before turning back to the lightshow. "No. It'll be the same as it always is. 'Blood Traitor' this, 'Mudblood' that, 'the Dark Lord blah-dy blah-dy blah'. You'd think they'd come up with better lines after taking over the entire island. I guess they killed anyone with any intelligence. You think it'll be anyone we know?"

"Ooh!" Hermione's eyes lit up behind her sunglasses. "I hope it's a Weasley. I'd love to pay them back for everything they did to us. Maybe even tweak the runes a little so that they …"

"Mya," Luna stated firmly, "we carved those runes to keep you, me, and Harry safe. Messing with them now would be the end of all of us."

Hermione's response was interrupted by the runic array glowing a brilliant white before fading, revealing three wizards and two witches, each wearing a black robe and silver featureless-yet-gendered mask. The newcomers blinked a few times attempting to clear their vision before the central figure, one of the men, stepped forward.

"The Last Blood Traitor and the Mudblood," the wizard spat. "The Dark Lord will be most pleased to learn of your deaths. I think this … location … will make a fine palace for our Lord. No doubt your so-called 'Chosen One' has fled the country like the weakling he is. He –"

 _Sluuuuuurrp._ Five pairs of eyes snapped to Luna as she finished her drink, and one pair rolled in exasperation.

"What?" Luna asked innocently. She looked at the five Death Eaters, then to Hermione who was shaking her head in amusement, then back at their 'guests'.

"Oh. I interrupted the monologue again, didn't I?"

Hermione lazily waved the invading magicals along. "Please continue."

"Right, well then," the central Death Eater muttered, trying to recover his obviously rehearsed speech. "Traitor, Mudblood, no Potter, right! No doubt, your so-called 'Chosen One' has fled the country like the weakling he—"

"Luna," Hermione sighed, interrupting the now furious speaker, "I think you're absolutely right. There's probably an IQ test to join up with His Dork Majesty and if you score higher than a Goyle, they off you. This is boring and a waste of our time. Skip!"

Hermione flicked her wand out of her hidden holster and targeted the point of the array.

" _Expiscio_."

The runes flared a blood red and five silver masks instantly melted and flowed around their wearer's jaw and neck, sealing their mouths shut while the five black robes lost their hoods and gained white stripes and stitched themselves together forming five rough but effective straitjackets.

Both Hermione and Luna slapped their hands over their mouths in shock as two mops of bright red hair revealed themselves from among the Death Eaters.

"Oh, Morgana!" whispered Hermione, as she and Luna shared a glance.

"I know!" Luna replied. "I can't believe I forgot either!"

"Wait, what? You don't rec-" Hermione's hands dropped slowly as she looked at the blonde in confusion.

"I forgot the music! One second," Luna interrupted as she leaped from her lounge chair, sunglasses clattering on the stone floor. Somehow, her refilled drink managed to land back on the table undamaged and unspilt. Luna was halfway down the stairs before remembering that Magic was, in fact, a thing, and with a quick _accio_ deftly caught the handheld tape player zooming toward her. She jogged back up the stairs and skipped over to her chair, roughly plopping herself down, causing the furniture to scrape loudly against the stone.

"Got it!" Luna waved the tape player happily. She pressed the play button, shouting " _sonorous"_ in her glee as she did so, and the sound of pipe organs blasting Bach's _Toccata and Fugue in D minor_ overwhelmingly filled the air.

"Luna! Too loud!" Hermione shouted, her hands now covering her ears lest her drums be blasted apart by the powerful organ chords.

"Oh. Right. _Quietus,_ " Luna said quietly, and the music lowered to a manageable and conversational level.

Hermione sighed. The day was not going well. Luna wasn't usually this out of it, and Harry was, well, Harry. Knowing her luck, some fictional character was going to fall out of their floo next, and she was going to have to deal with that along with everything else. On top of all that, a mental tick kept probing her memories, like something important had just happened. She shook her head slightly. She'd have to deal with that after they questioned and expelled their Death Eater victims.

She looked back at the bound and gagged intruders, and the tick became a hammer that pounded recognition to the front of her mind. A predatory grin slowly grew onto her face as she carefully set her drink down and rose to her feet, stalking over to the edge of the rune array.

"Oh, Luna-dear" Hermione called melodiously to the perky blonde, her grin never once wavering. "I believe we've caught ourselves a pair of traitors. Would you be a dear and get Harry for me? I don't think he'd want to miss this."

"What? Oh, sure. Noddy?" Luna asked distantly, gently swaying back and forth to the music emanating from the enchanted tape player.

An elderly long-eared house elf, dressed smartly in a well fitted black and white suit and tailed coat straight out of the 17th century, _pop_ -ed off to Luna's right and gave a small bow.

"Mistress called for Noddy?" the house elf asked promptly.

"I need you to go get Harry, please." Luna ordered the elf. "You also might want to warn the other elves away from the Landing for a few hours too. I wouldn't want any of you to get hurt."

"Tilsy is keeping watch and caring for Master Harry, Mistress. Should Noddy be telling Tilsy off?" Noddy asked carefully.

Luna picked up on the underlying insinuation for what it was. "Oh, no! No, of course not. Look, um, just – just tell Tilsy that we need Harry and he'll be fine in whatever condition he's currently in."

Luna sighed in relief as Noddy bowed again and _pop_ -ed away. She'd misspoke once before when dealing with the elves and they'd punished one of their own on her perceived orders. Hermione had found out, and unleashed her fury on the unwitting culprit.

Luna absentmindedly rubbed her rear tenderly. She'd been sore for a fortnight and been banished from the bedroom for half of that. It would have been longer, but Hermione grudgingly acquiesced when Harry mentioned that Luna's absence was punishing the both of them as well. Luna blushed as she recalled her return to their bed. Hermione was still in a 'punishing' mood, and had made that abundantly clear when she and Harry both took her that night. She leaned back into her lounge chair and closed her eyes as she fell into the pleasant memory, one hand moving up her chest, caressing herself softly while the other slowly slid down her slightly exposed midriff and past her waistband, creeping slowly and methodically downward until –

"Luna!" Hermione shrieked. "Here? Did you forget we had company?"

Luna's eyes snapped open and she blushed furiously, having the good sense to look both abashed and horrified, withdrawing her hands and placing them gently in her lap. She glanced around, taking in the six pairs of eyes that were once again focused entirely on her, although Hermione also had a light blush on her cheeks that paired prettily with her shocked expression.

"Um, kinda?" Luna said meekly.

Hermione quickly recovered from her shock at seeing Luna about to pleasure herself in front of five strangers, no not just strangers, _Death Eaters_ , and pinched the bridge of her nose, huffing loudly. She heard a whimpering coming from the captives.

"Aaaarrrggghh!" she screamed. "We'll just have to start over. _Sominus,_ " Hermione gestured vaguely across the rune array and five bodies fell limply to the floor, the two red-heads snoring loudly.

She drew her wand and pointed it menacingly at the newly offending tape player. " _Quietus,"_ Hermione intoned and the organ music ceased.

"Luna," Hermione stated, clearly annoyed as she ran a palm through her hair and down her face, "I need you to try and focus. They only come four times a year, so we have to get as much information as we can out of them, ok?"

Luna's face fell. Her bottom lip began to quiver and moisture gathered in her silver eyes.

"I'm – * _sniff_ * – I'm trying Mya. I want to help, but it's hard for me to keep on task."

Hermione's face softened as she walked over to her friend and lover and knelt down in front of her.

"I know, hon," she said as she patted Luna's knee gently, "I know. I just need to you try really hard for me, ok?"

"I am!" Luna emphasized. "I just – I feel like such a burden to the both of you. I know you both love me, but I don't like being broken." Luna's hands raised to cover her eyes in a fruitless attempt to stem the flow of tears. "I don't want to be broken, Mya. Why do I have to be broken?"

Hermione's heart broke. She ran her hand over the top of Luna's head and down the side of her face, caressing her cheek lovingly. Lightly grasping Luna's hands in her own, she lowered them onto her lap, leaned forward and placed a feather-light kiss on her lips.

"Luna. Oh, Luna," Hermione said delicately. "We're all a little broken. That's what war does, and that's why we have each other, so we fit together, broken pieces and all."

Hermione took a steadying breath, calming her shuddering emotions. If she had to be the glue to hold her broken family together, so be it. She placed a quick kiss on Luna's temple and withdrew, looking kindly into her eyes.

"Why don't we go find Harry?" Hermione suggested. "The house elves should've been back by now, so he's probably being stubborn."

Luna giggled, her returning natural glow filling the depressed mood surrounding the pair, and wiped the last few remaining tears from her red and slightly puffy eyes.

"Well, we did turn him into a unicorn. Maybe being a stubborn ass is more in his nature than we thought?"

* * *

 **A/N:** Thanks for reading! Reviews, follows, favorites, annoyed ramblings, I want it all, so please take the time to leave at least a small note for me before you go. Thanks!


	2. Chapter 2: The Truth Hurts the Most

**A/N:** I'm blown away by the activity on this little story of mine. More than 500 unique visitors, 80 followers, and 41 Favorites for a single 3500 word chapter as of this submission.

Holy crap.

For those of you that reviewed, thank you so much! I love reading what you all have to say and think about this story, so keep them coming. I'd like to take the time to address them here, so if you're looking for the story it's down past the review responses. Enjoy the chapter!

Now, on to the reviews, in the order to which they were received. I can't promise I'll do this at the beginning of _every_ chapter, but I'd like to acknowledge those who took the time to respond to my first chapter. Reviews help keep me writing.

 **Nocte Furorem:** I'm so happy you picked up on that! Thanks for the encouragement and understanding.

 **vienx.001:** Unfortunately, this isn't a Harry!Harem story, and I doubt I'll ever write one. I find that most of them end up with a VERY one-sided power dynamic which isn't something I'm interested in. Thanks for reading though, and I hope you enjoy the story regardless!

 **moonstone88:** The backstory will be coming in small bits, so you'll just have to keep reading! I've got everything that happened before the story began blocked out, so it's just a matter of fitting it in when the story demands it. Thanks!

 **god of all:** Thanks! I'm going to be on a strict two week update schedule to keep myself from burning out on the story. Sorry!

 **D. Mentor:** Thanks! I hope you continue to enjoy the tale as it comes out.

 **Hexist:** I can't answer much of your question right here because it'll be addressed both in this chapter and the next. What I can say is that Riddle controlling Magical Britian would put everyone under his rule, so it wouldn't just be purebloods running recon, but halfbloods too. Firstborn would be not much better than chattel, and wouldn't be trusted, but their children would be classified as halfbloods and could be sent off on patrol. Also, 20 is an almost insignificant number to the Dark Lord, especially considering how many people die from things like toasters every year worldwide (700!).

 **desslok69:** Thanks! This is definitely Lunar Harmony, so nothing to worry about there. I'm shooting for chapters between 3k and 4k words, but the length is truly governed by how the story develops. I doubt I'll post a chapter of less than 3k words, but 10k is certainly a possibility (chapter 3 was beyond that at one point).

 **ExceleXKurokami:** I can't believe I missed the "Harry's horn could totally be a dildo" possibility! Holy crap, that's hilarious. I hope you'll be surprised with how I'll be portraying Luna. She's had it rough in her life so far, but you'll see just how bad it has been for her, uh, maybe chapter 5-6 ish? Sorry about the tease, and the wait, but I gotta pace myself. We'll get there, but it's not a happy scene.

 **Iesous Darma:** My grammar is only 'acceptable'? Ouch! *grins* Seriously (or should it be Siriusly?) though, thanks for the review. It's good to know that people are able to find the story multiple ways. I look forward to your review once you've consumed a few more chapters. Thanks!

Thanks again to everyone who read, followed, favourited, downloaded (looking at you, smartphone users), and reviewed. I'm incredibly grateful for your support. Enjoy the latest installment of **Of Fae and Fervor**!

* * *

 **Chapter 2 – The Truth Hurts the Most**

Harry slowly gained awareness as he recovered from his self-induced stupor. He noticed a faint humming coming from somewhere above him and a slight, warm breeze across his face, a pleasant contrast to the cold, rough stone he'd been lying on.

Thank Merlin for cushioning charms.

He opened his eyes, hoping that the transfiguration accident had passed and he was back to his relatively average self, and was met with a pair of giant hazel orbs atop a long, slender nose mere inches from his face.

"Gah!" he shouted as he recoiled sharply, striking the back of his head on the stone floor, stars filling his vision.

"Is Master Harry feeling better?" the eyes said. "Mistresses ask Tilsy to watch Master Harry, so Tilsy watches him closely. Well, Mistresses _would have_ asked Tilsy to watch Master Harry if they hadn't been distracted by bad guests, so Tilsy does what Mistresses would have asked anyway."

Harry groaned and shook his head in a valiant but misguided attempt to reduce the pain, succeeding only in giving himself a slight headache to accompany the pain of the strike.

"Um," Harry coughed out, "Tilsy, I'm sure you did exactly what they thought you would do. Uh, hold on."

He put his hands down and pushed himself up to a sitting position, Tilsy having moved back to a slightly more respectable distance.

Hands. That was a good sign.

He carefully placed one palm on his head, fingers moving through his hair looking for any sort of horn, bump, or sign of magical creature.

Nothing there either. Two down, one to go.

He brought his hand in front of his face and inspected them closely. No coarse hair, check. No blue. Check. Alright!

Harry shifted his feet underneath him and made to stand. He made it about halfway before he felt a strong, painful jerk on his lower back, just above his pelvis, and crashed back to the floor.

Stupid tail.

Taking care not to step on his rainbow horsetail he gingerly stood, rubbing his backside soothingly.

"Tilsy," he addressed the attentive and now bouncing elf, "what were Hermione and Luna doing again?"

"Mistresses were greeting bad guests Master. They's be up on the Landing. Would Master like Tilsy to bring Master to his Mistresses?"

Harry's eyes narrowed. He'd figured they'd finally smartened up and stopped sending Death Eater patrols to this region, but apparently they were just tardy as well as stupid. With Hermione and Luna 'greeting' the party without him it was anyone's guess if there were any pieces left, especially if a Weasley was stupid enough to tag along. Considering the family's decisions during the war, that wasn't much of a stretch.

A sharp _pop_ heralded the arrival of another house elf.

"Master Harry! Mistress Myknee requests you be meeting her at the Landing, but she be forbidding house elves from being in the tower," Noddy said briskly, eyeing Tilsy warily.

Harry took a couple of deep breaths to calm himself. If Hermione had cleared the tower, she must be worried about runaway magic, which meant that someone they knew had arrived. Hopefully not a Weasley. That might bring up an uncomfortable discussion later, and Harry wasn't sure he had the stamina for that.

Still, he wasn't about to go and ignore Hermione's wishes. They needed all the information they could get being cooped up in the castle for years on end, and Harry swore by the adage 'happy wife, happy life', although with two women in his world it wasn't just doubled; it was squared.

"Thanks for letting me know Noddy. And thank you, Tilsy, for watching me. Next time, not so close though, alright?"

"Yes, Master Harry," Tilsy said with a curtsy.

The two house elves _pop_ -ed away, and Harry made his way toward the Landing tower. He'd arrived at the base of the spiral stair headed up to the Landing when he met Hermione and Luna just stepping down the last flight. Harry waved to get their attention and stood back, leaning against the wall, his forgotten rainbow tail wagging eagerly behind him.

Luna was first to notice Harry, and more specifically his tail, and promptly burst into laughter. Hermione looked at her questioningly, stopping their gait a handful of steps from the bottom.

"Harry – tail," was all Luna managed to get out, but it was enough. Hermione looked at the raven-haired wizard and giggled.

"Harry," she teased, "you must be feeling better, you're not so blue anymore."

"Very funny, 'Mione," Harry responded dryly. "Noddy said you'd instituted a lockdown on the Landing? Who'd we snag?"

"Oh, it's quite a _tail_ , Harry-dear," Luna giggled, managing to calm her laughter.

"I'm sure I could fix it with just a _swish and flick_ , don't you think so Harry?" Hermione continued.

Harry groaned. "You two are no fair, ganging up on me like that. What's a bloke supposed to do?

"Love us," Hermione said plainly. "Besides, we trade off 'ganging up' often enough to keep things interesting, don't we Luna? _Finite_."

Harry quickly felt his backside as the counter-spell flowed over him, confirming that this newest nightmare was, in fact, over. He grinned.

"Thanks, love. So, lockdown?"

"Yeah. Five this time, but I think you need to be here for this. Also –"

"I'm fine, Mya," Luna said, moving down to Harry and wrapping her arms around him. "I just needed you both a bit more than usual I think. I'll be alright. I promise."

"We know, dearest," Harry said softly, stroking her blonde hair gently with one hand, the other wrapping around the younger witch tightly. "Whatever you need, we're here for you."

Harry looked up at Hermione, the brunette still standing on the stair, and lifted his hand from Luna's head, beckoning the witch toward him. Hermione smiled and ran down the stairs, crashing into her two lovers and wrapping them in a firm embrace.

The stood there for some time, their mutual adoration centering their respective psyches before Harry moved to break the contact.

"Alright, everyone better?"

He was answered with a small nod from Luna and a firm one from Hermione.

"Then let's go deal our 'guests'. How did you keep them restrained?"

Hermione smirked, glee sparking in her eyes as she took a few steps back and straightened her blouse.

"I tried that new transfiguration spell we've been working on, then got frustrated and put them all to sleep," she said nonchalantly. "It seems to work quite well. Oh! I can't believe I almost forgot to tell you. We've caught five _Putedemorts_ , and two of them have red hair," she finished in a stage whisper.

Harry's eyes widened at the information, although it could have been because Luna was now attempting to squeeze his chest into a perfect circle.

"Luna," he coughed. "Can't. Breathe."

Luna made no outward sign of acknowledgement, but her embrace loosened and Harry sucked in precious gulps of air.

"Back to the Landing then? Luna, you have to let go."

Luna shook her head soundlessly and gripped tighter.

"Luna," Harry pleaded, offering a limb as Hermione looked on in amusement. "You can grab my arm, but we're not going to be able to walk up the stairs like this. And before you say 'house elf', remember that 'Mione put the Landing on lockdown."

Luna pouted but extracted herself from Harry's torso and latched on to his offered appendage.

"Ready now, you two?" Hermione asked. "Come on, I don't know how long that new spell lasts, and I'd rather not have to listen to the lowest common IQ denominator spout off annoying propaganda that hasn't changed in a decade."

With that, Hermione turned and walked up the stairs, two pairs of eyes closely following her swaying jean-clad hips. Both Harry and Luna cocked their heads to the side, straining slightly as the focus of their desire ascended the tower.

"I'm so glad she chose us," Luna said dreamily, and Harry could only nod dumbly in agreement.

* * *

The trio met at the top of the staircase, and Harry instantly noticed the red, snoring locks inside the array. His face immediately hardened and he snapped his wrist, his trusted holly and phoenix feather wand slapping into his palm.

"Well, you weren't kidding about the red hair, 'Mione. Should we do them first, or save them for last?"

"I really don't care one way or the other, Harry," Hermione said casually, "as long as we get to show them what we do to traitors. Slowly."

"Last please," Luna piped in, having released Harry's arm and drawn her own applewood and unicorn hair wand. "I would hate to ruin the main course with dessert first."

"Right. Luna, if you would do the honors then?" Harry indicated.

Luna stepped forward and gestured with her wand to three of the unfortunate Death Eaters: the spokes-wizard and the two witches. Three bright silver ropes shot forward and wrapped around their sleeping forms, pulling them upright and placing them just on the inside edge of the runes. Luna slashed her wand down to her feet, where the three ropes bound themselves tightly to a rusted iron eyehook embedded in the stone floor. She turned and grinned widely to Harry and Hermione, bouncing happily on her toes. Behind her, the three bound magicals blinked awake, both confused and terrified at their new predicament.

"Well done, Luna!" Hermione congratulated the blonde as she stepped forward ignoring the grunts and faint struggles of the Death Eaters and raised her right hand, fingers splayed out in an array and her palm facing toward the entangled captives. As Luna moved to the side and behind her, Hermione began to chant.

" _Et invocate deos magicae lucis atque umbrae, adstringere vim veri linguas ipsorum. Si noluerint honorem vocari potest tenentur munera accipiunt pro famulari."_

The brunette witch's bushy hair began to stand out in all directions, magical power building within her body as she repeated the chant, a second tone adding itself to her natural voice.

" _Et invocate deos magicae lucis atque umbrae, adstringere vim veri linguas ipsorum. Si noluerint honorem vocari potest tenentur munera accipiunt pro famulari._ "

Hermione's form slowly became ringed in faint golden light, the color gaining strength as she continued chanting. A gentle breeze blew around her, her blouse rippling silently, and her voice gained a further addition.

" _Et invocate deos magicae lucis atque umbrae, adstringere vim veri linguas ipsorum. Si noluerint honorem vocari potest tenentur munera accipiunt pro famulari._ "

Hermione was floating now, her toes pointed daintily at the floor, the chant a cacophony of voices. She was encased in a bright golden light and the gentle breeze had become a howling wind ripping around her form. The three unfortunate souls before her visibly paled, color draining from their faces as they witnessed the power the firstborn witch wielded.

Hermione's eyes snapped open, her chocolate iris replaced by solid glowing white orbs and spoke a single word.

" _Veritas._ "

The light left the two bound witches' eyes and their heads fell limply, chins resting on their chests as the ritual claimed their life and magic as payment. A wet stain slowly appeared in the front of the dark wizard's robes as he sagged into the silver rope binding him. Behind them, two identical ginger-haired wizards hastily muffled each other's squeaks at seeing two lives ended so quickly without the use of the Killing Curse. Each had woken during Luna's display and were attempting to deceive the trio in the hopes that they would be released or manage to escape.

Hermione slowly settled on the stone floor of the Landing, all her accumulated power having been funneled into the array, and took a few deep breaths, sweat glistening from her brow and slowly trickling down between her heaving breasts.

"That always makes me hot when you do that, Mya," Luna said breathlessly.

"I always get so sweaty though," Hermione said weakly between breaths, turning to address the witch. "I keep forgetting to wear exercise clothes."

"You could always go naked," Luna mentioned hopefully.

"I'm sure you would like that, wouldn't you?"

"Yep!"

Harry strode forward and gave Hermione a passionate kiss before lowering his lips to her ear.

"Luna's not the only one that finds you arousing, 'Mione," he whispered making the witch tremble slightly before stepping around her and conjuring a sturdy wicker armchair, settling in comfortably. Luna leapt forward to assist the weakened brunette back to her lounge chair, taking the opportunity to squeeze her cute bottom more than a few times as halfhearted protests fell on deaf ears.

Harry cleared his throat and addressed the bound and distressed Death Eater in front of him, waving his wand vaguely causing the silver muzzle to fall around the wizard's neck.

"We're going to start off with some easy questions first, before we get into the meat of what I need from you," he said calmly to the terrified and panicked wizard. "You should know, however, that the ritual won't compel you to answer truthfully, but every lie you tell will cause a small part of your soul to be cut away. It'll be quite painful, but you'll recover eventually; souls are said to be infinite after all. Now, what's your name?"

The bound wizard tried to look brave by straightening only to tighten the silver cords around him, failing spectacularly having succeeded only in making himself look pained and uncomfortable. The bound Death Eater did find a bit of verbal courage, however, and attempted a measure of defiance.

"The Dark Lord will wipe you from the world and the next, Potter! He will protect me from you and your filth! We are legion! We have taken one name, and that is Septitu – AAARRRRGGGHH!" he screamed in obvious pain as a red tendril emerged from Luna's silver rope and burrowed into his chest before receding with a small multicolored piece of light that caused the rope to pulse slightly when it merged with the magical cord.

Harry shook his head in amusement.

"You never listen. All you have to do is tell the truth. Why is that so hard?"

"No brain cells, remember Harry?" Luna piped up from the lounge chair she shared with Hermione, suspiciously wider now than it had been when it was first conjured. "Oh wait, you weren't here for that. Hermione and I decided that all _Putedemorts_ are idiots, and they kill anyone smarter than the Hogwarts Squid."

"Now, Luna," admonished Hermione, "that's not a very nice thing to say about such a gentle creature."

Harry chuckled before turning his attention back to the captive in front of him, the pain appearing to have receded a bit.

"Shall we try that one again? Name please."

The wizard steeled his jaw and attempted to defy Harry's questions once again.

"The Dark Lord will see you hung from the rafters of the Ministry, Potter! We are all—"

The red tendril slowly wormed its way toward his chest again and quickly disabused the Death Eater of any token defiance.

"Harper! Dylan Harper!" the wizard shouted, the tendril slowly wafting back and forth across his chest as if searching for an entrance.

"Good, Mr. Harper, you're learning. Now, what did you do to earn your Mark?"

"I – I – I murdered a muggleborn family."

"Of course you did. And how old was the young firstborn that you so valiantly defeated?"

The wizard mumbled out a word too quiet and muddled for Harry to hear.

"What was that? You're going to have to speak louder, or I'll have to consider that deception."

"Two," Harper said quietly. "She was two."

Hermione sprang to her feet, throwing a cuddling Luna off the lounge in the process with a small ' _eep_ '.

"I bet that made you feel _real_ good slaughtering an innocent child like that, didn't it?" she said, drawing her wand and pointing it at the Death Eater. "Did you fuck her too, or just her mother and maybe her father while you made her watch? Well? I need an answer or you're going to lose a precious friend," Hermione finished hotly, her wand now pointing at the wizard's damp crotch, a dangerous-looking yellow curse lit on the tip.

"I didn't do no such thing! I'm not a rapist! We just went in and killed the lot, all four, and then left! No Dark Mark, no rape, nothing, just in, out, and gone. Honest!"

Hermione glared at the red tendril, but it remained as it was, waving gently back and forth. The brunette witch sniffed loudly and stowed her wand back in her holster, turning and stomping back to the lounge chair where a slightly dazed and rumpled Luna was just climbing back into the seat.

" _Désolé_ , _ma petite lune,_ " Hermione whispered, calming her ire through sheer will and kissing Luna gently on the lips before allowing the blonde to cuddle back into her side.

"How long have you had the Dark Mark then? It sounds like Ol' Snake Eyes is lowering his standards, which fits nicely with your analysis, 'Mione," Harry acknowledged to fiery witch.

"Six months. I've had it six months. I had no choice! They would have killed me and my family if I hadn't joined. I have a daughter!" the wizard pleaded.

"And yet you murdered a family with a young daughter to save your own, and one who likely knew nothing of our world until then. You made the wrong choice, and now you'll have to pay the consequences, but those will come in time. Now that the formalities are out of the way, I have a few more pointed questions I need answered.

"What is your Dork Majesty looking for to enhance his power now, and when is he planning on invading the continent?"

"I don't know! He would trust someone like me with that information. I don't have any idea about – AAAAAAAHHHHHH!"

For the second time in the interrogation, the crimson tendril dove deep within the chest of the Death Eater and slowly withdrew another multicolored and amorphous piece. The silver cord pulsed again, greedily absorbing the soul piece it had been fed.

"I wasn't told anything! Look, I'll tell you what I heard, rumors and such, alright? Just don't let it do it again. It feels like I'm being torn apart!"

"That's because you are," Harry replied casually. "Every time you lie, it takes a piece of your soul. Every. Single. Time.

"Now, you were saying?"

"Oh. Oh Merlin. Um, uh, well – we were told that recruitment was going well, but allies were hard to come by. Uh, something about Durmstang betraying the Dark? I don't even know what a Durmstang is, but Dolohov was quite upset about it. Um, something about faerie magics being more powerful than wizard magic too, but that's ridiculous. That's it, that's all I know!"

Harry nodded absently, his mind processing the new information he'd been given. If Durmstang was turning against the Dark, then the continent might survive, even if the Isles were lost. He turned to the two witches behind him, only to discover they'd nodded off curled up against one another. They looked so cute and content together he couldn't bring himself to wake them.

Harry sighed and turned back to the unfortunate man.

"So you'll let me go now, right? You're supposed to be on the Light side, and they don't kill captives. I told you what you wanted, so can I go now?" the wizard pleaded.

"Well," Harry drew out, "I could, but I don't think I'm going to. See, you _did_ murder a two year old in cold blood, and I didn't ask about anything else that I'm sure you did to 'protect' your family. And besides, the ritual requires the sacrifice of all targets. It's probably the reason the Wizengamot banned it back in the 1200's or so. So yeah, sorry."

With that simple word of insincere apology, Harry drew his wand and waved it across the Death Eater's torso. Any cries of protest were muted as the silver muzzle clamped back in place around his mouth and nose. The Death Eater's eyes grew impossibly wide in terror as a dozen more blood-red tendrils sprang from the silver cord, making thirteen in total, and plunged forcibly into the wizard's chest. The Death Eater's body shook violently as the tendrils ripped his soul into thirteen equal pieces and withdrew them from the now limp and sightless corpse, the silver cord glowing brightly as it absorbed the former wizard's essence.

Harry tapped the iron eyehook at his feet and Luna's silver ropes unbound themselves, the three lifeless bodies collapsing roughly onto the array. He exhaled, glad to be through the grim encounter and closed his eyes briefly, centering himself before addressing the two remaining lives inside the runes.

"I know you've been awake this whole time, boys. I've been looking forward to this day to repay you for what you did you my family, and I'm going to enjoy every last second of your suffering."

* * *

 **A/N:** Whew! Another chapter posted. We're gonna keep getting darker for a bit before I let a little light in, so hang tight. As always, reviews are welcome and encouraged. Thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter 3: Feeling Pensive

**A/N:** Apologies on the late chapter, but this one's grim, and I didn't want to let it ride for two weeks alone. As such, I'm dropping a pair of chapters today, and Ch 4 should closely follow this one.

For the non-canon spells, non-english phrases, and anything else that might be difficult to pick up on, I'll be posting a hopefully handy guide here at the top to reference as needed. I prefer it up here versus as a footnote so my readers have a basic translation in their mind before it comes up, rather than having to go searching for it later. I should mention that while my French is passable, my Swedish is horrifyingly poor, so I'm bound to make more than a few grammatical or spelling errors.

 **Phrases:**

 _Désolé_ : [French] I'm sorry  
 _ma petite lune_ : [French] my little moon  
 _Vackra drömmare_ : [Swedish] beautiful dreamer  
 _Mitt Hjärta_ : [Swedish] my heart  
 _ch_ _è_ _re lune:_ [French] dear moon

 **Spells:**

 _Mas Exciso_ : Castration Curse. Yellow. Very painful.  
 _Pausa/Resumis_ : Pauses/Resumes a pensive memory.  
 _dissamuli_ : Disguise Charm. Makes the user unrecognizable. Dispellable.

 **Disclaimer** : I'm thankful for the opportunity to play around in the sand box that is the Harry Potter Universe. Apologies to those authors who's ideas I have unintentionally incorporated. Also, to whomever first authored the idea of the Piercing Hex, I've totally stolen that and used it, so thanks for adding that to the universe.

Please enjoy the third installment of **Of Fae and Fervor**!

* * *

 **Chapter 3 – Feeling Pensive**

Hermione knew she had a problem.

If she was being totally honest with herself, she'd had it for years. It was her darkest secret, one she'd managed to keep from both Luna and Harry for nearly five years, despite their constant proximity. Her fix came four times a year, and she relished each and every opportunity. The sheer amount power she channeled during the Rite of Truth was better than any narcotic high and more pleasurable than any orgasm. Nothing made her feel more alive, more powerful, than the sensation of lives and magic not her own coursing through her body. Every sense, every emotion, every thought became a pillar of perfection, and Hermione craved it all, but coming off that peak left her emotionally, mentally, and physically drained.

Luna was always there to carry her back to a chair or bed once she completed the rite, and Hermione was eternally thankful for the younger witch's support and affection. She did her best to suppress the twinges of guilt that racked her exhausted frame, closing her eyes and attempting to shut out the real world, diving back into memories to relive the ritual time and again before they slipped away into the fractured recesses of her mind.

Hermione's emotions began to boil as her cravings returned and recollection of the ritual slowly faded into nothingness, like so many of her memories of late.

 _I can stop whenever I want,_ she lied to herself. _I'm only doing this to protect Harry and Luna. I have to be strong for them._

Hermione felt an ugly rage build in her chest as she attempted to placate the rational part of her mind. She was the Brightest Witch of her Age! She'd handled the ritual without issue for five years, and she'd do it for fifty more if that's what she needed to do; if that's what Harry and Luna needed her to do.

The words of their most recent captive wafted through her awareness.

"Two. She was two," the voice said.

Blood pounded in Hermione's ears as her rage focused on the external target. The memory of their encounter with the Carrows sprang unbidden to the forefront of her mind. They'd raped and murdered an entire family of seven for their Dark Mark, the oldest child no more than 10. The siblings had laughed before Harry tore their souls from their bodies, dying with those demonic smiles plastered on their faces. All the memories she'd lost and that one never seemed to be far away. This one, this Death Eater, was cut from the same cloth.

"I bet that made you feel _real_ good slaughtering an innocent child like that, didn't it?" Hermione said angrily, leaping to her feet and spilling a forgotten blonde witch to the cold stone floor.

"Did you fuck her too, or just her mother and maybe her father while you made her watch? Well? I need an answer or you're going to lose a precious friend."

The yellow-colored _Mas Exciso_ curse lit the tip of her wand and she pointed it at the Death Eater's groin.

 _Say it,_ Hermione willed the captive. _Admit it and I'll make sure you never violate anyone again._

"I didn't do no such thing! I'm not a rapist! We just went in and killed the lot, all four, and then left! No Dark Mark, no rape, nothing, just in, out, and gone. Honest!"

Hermione glowered at the Death Eater, waiting for the telltale scream of pain indicating an untruth. When none came, the furious witch sniffed loudly and turned back to her seat.

 _He'll die screaming once the rite completes anyway,_ she thought grimly. _He deserves it._

Her demeanor softened as she took in Luna's dazed expression, the younger witch attempting to climb back into their abandoned chair. Hermione quickly strode over and helped the bewildered woman back onto the expanded lounge.

" _Désolé_ , _ma petite lune,_ " she whispered, kissing Luna softly before allowing the blonde's head to rest gently on her bosom, the rest of her body wrapped tightly around Hermione's still-damp frame. Hermione leaned back into the lounge and closed her eyes, her fingers gently tracing lines through Luna's blonde locks. Her recent outburst and magical exhaustion conspired to draw her to the realm of Morpheus.

 _Just a little nap,_ she managed to herself as her consciousness faded. _Harry will be fine dealing with a few Death Eaters on his own._

* * *

"Mya."

Luna's voice whispered through the Ether, a gentle shake rousing the exhausted brunette from her slumber.

" _Vackra drömmare_ ," she tried again, "Harry's talking to the twins. Do you want to listen, or should I let you sleep?"

The twins? Couldn't be the Patils, they'd been killed attempting to flee the island years ago. Something about red hair then?

Right. _Those_ twins.

Hermione forced her eyes open, still quite spent from earlier. Her eyes widened as she took in the unexpected scene before her. Harry had conjured two very medieval-looking wooden tables and bound the identical gingers to them. Hempen ropes ran from each limb to a corner where they disappeared into the wood, forcing their bodies to spread uncomfortably. Their heads were restrained by a leather strap across their forehead, restricting all movement and forcing the gaze upward, placing Harry permanently in their peripheral.

"Wha-" she managed to squeak before Luna's hand clamped down over her mouth, silencing any further utterances.

"Shhh," Luna said quietly, "this is important, I can feel it."

Hermione could only look on at the darkness before her. They'd become accustomed to death and killing, even the necessary torture from the ritual, but this was a side of Harry she'd never seen or even suspected in the seventeen years she'd known him.

She looked on as Harry stalked around the bound redheads, his firm expression projecting an air of ruthless control.

"I haven't forgotten," Harry said darkly as he paced around the racks, slowly tightening the ropes binding the gingers. "Night after night, for years, I woke screaming from the nightmares; nightmares that your family caused. Did you think I would move on? Forgive your betrayal?"

Fred was the first to find his voice.

"H – Ha – Harry," he stammered. "We were Imperiused! We didn't know! Y – You've got to believe us!"

"The _Imperius_ defense?" Harry chuckled mirthlessly. "Did you really think I'd believe that lie?"

With a pair of quick _diffindo_ s, Harry deftly slit the fabric on each twin's left forearm, revealing two jet black snake-and-skull tattoos.

"I've done this almost two dozen times," Harry said, shaking his head in minor disbelief, "and I've heard nearly twice that many stories of how they each received their brand. We know what they are, boys, and we know how they're given. Not that it matters either way.

"You destroyed my family, cursed my beloveds, and annihilated my future," he accused, waving his wand menacingly at the twins. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't slowly dismember the both of you."

Hermione gave a muffled squeak at the mention of the Weasleys' betrayal. She remembered the surviving family assaulting the trio back when they resided at the rebuilt cottage in Godric's Hollow, but they'd escaped without major injury, leaving the lifeless bodies of Ron, Ginny, and Molly behind. What, then, was Harry referring to?

"It was Ron and Ginny!" George pleaded. "It was their idea! We didn't know it was your home! It was just a misunderstanding!"

Harry jerked his wand towards George's head, a lavender light neatly severing his remaining ear from his body.

"Is that why I found you both cock-deep in Luna then?" Harry thundered over George's cries of pain, any thought to the women behind him lost in his fury. "And Ron and Percy raping Hermione right beside you? Perhaps the Cruciatus you were both holding was just a miscast charm?"

"Or maybe Ginny and Molly _murdering my daughters_ was just misunderstanding too?" Harry ranted, smothering the feeble protests from the two horrified redheads before him. "And to top it all off, you destroy any chance of a future by sterilizing the only two people who could ever love me.

"I should be thanking you, though," Harry continued, his voice calmer but his emerald eyes blazing with unbridled hatred. "You've saved me years of hassle. I killed Ron, Ginny, and Molly in Godric's Hollow that night, and tracked down Percy a year later at the Burrow. With Bill, Charlie, and Arthur all dying in the war, it just leaves you two, and you came to me. You may have ended the Potter line, but I get to end the Weasley one on my terms."

Harry's wand lit with a bright green light and he pointed it at the twins. "Who wants to die first?"

Two grey bolts of magic shot past Harry on either side of him, punching a ragged hole through the leather strap, forehead, and wood backing of their targets. Startled, he slowly turned to view the aggressors, his anger fleeing as he took in the scene.

Hermione and Luna stood teary-eyed, wand-arm outstretched and quivering. They slowly lowered their wands once they were certain of their targets' demise, each taking ragged breaths as they collected their thoughts.

"Why don't I remember?" Hermione croaked, falling to her knees, her wand dropping forgotten to the floor. "Why did—"

"Harry," Luna said quietly as Hermione's voice trailed off and she curled into her own hands, sobbing quietly. "What happened to us?"

Luna gingerly stepped toward the kneeling witch and softly stroked her bushy hair, reaching out with her other hand toward the petrified wizard.

"Harry," she said again, "we deserve to know."

"I can't," Harry protested. "I can't lose you both again."

"Harry," Luna tried a third time, but Harry gently cut her off.

"You don't understand, Luna. You were both gone. Alive, breathing, but just not … there. I don't know if it was the assault, or losing … losing …"

Harry trailed off as painful memories resurfaced before regaining his composure. "I couldn't leave you like that. You're both so important to me, so I did the only thing I could think of: I obliviated you both. The entire previous year. No children, no attack, none of it. It brought you back, but I don't think I did it very well. I'm sorry."

"That's why I have a hard time remembering things, isn't it?" Hermione said weakly from the floor, tear streaks marring her face as she looked up at Luna and Harry. "And why Luna has her moments as often as she does?"

"I think so," Harry said quietly, bowing his head in apology and moving to turn away from the two witches. "It's my fault. I broke you both."

Luna stepped forward and tightly embraced the raven-haired wizard before he could turn away from them.

"You saved us, Harry. You brought us back, but you have to let us know everything. You don't have to live with this alone."

"Luna's right," Hermione said, rising to her feet. "It wasn't your fault. It was theirs, and they're gone now. You've kept this to yourself for more than five years, it's time to let us in."

Harry looked into pairs of chocolate and silver eyes, and saw only love and compassion reflected within.

"Alright," he said in both surrender and relief. "Let's go get the pensive."

* * *

The trio moved into the castle greatroom and sat at a round oak table near the fireplace, Hermione, Luna, and the pensive on one side and Harry on the opposite. Drawing his wand, Harry placed the tip on his temple and concentrated on the painful memory, tears welling as he drew a dull silver thread from his mind. Reaching across the table, he placed the strand gently into the steel grey bowl before sagging back into his chair.

"Just one thing before you drop in, please? No questions afterward. I don't think I could handle it right now." Harry pleaded.

Luna and Hermione each gave Harry a small apologetic smile in understanding before turning to each other. A small firm nod was all that passed between them before they quickly submerged their faces into the swirling fluid, their minds meeting in a floating grey mist. The two witches took in the surrounding fragmented memory as flashes of people, places, and events fluttered around them in chaos.

"I can only imagine how difficult it must have been for Harry to pull this memory," Hermione commented at the anarchy surrounding them.

"I'm a bit surprised he was able to pull it at all," Luna replied calmly, "but I have faith that we'll see it eventually. Harry's stronger than he gives himself credit for."

"Absolutely," Hermione emphatically agreed as the mist began to coalesce around them. "Looks like its starting now. Stay with me?" she asked as she reached out and grasped Luna's hand tightly.

"Always, _Mitt Hjärta_."

The mist cleared, revealing the well-lit living room of a two-level cottage. A wooden whitewashed crib sat in one corner, nestled neatly between a comfortable-looking light blue loveseat and a large picture window looking out onto the small front yard. A younger Hermione Granger, dressed casually in a lavender camisole and warm brown drawstring pants, bent over the crib railing, cooing gently to a small squirming bundle inside. Across the room a beaming Harry Potter, himself garbed in pair of loose-fitting blue denim jeans and burgundy-and-gold rugby polo, sat easily in an ivory-toned padded armchair near the fireplace holding a half-full bottle to small pair of babbling lips, rocking the swaddled infant as she fed.

A bright-eyed Luna Lovegood, garbed only in a paisley smock, entered the room from the kitchen portal, a concerned frown adorning her face.

"Harry," she began, walking over to the raven-haired wizard and smoothly taking the feeding infant from his arms, "we're getting low on supplies again."

"Already?" Memory-Hermione inquired, addressing the new arrival, the small bundle below her gurgling in protest. "Mummy's right here, Rosie," she admonished as she reached back down to pick up the complaining child. She straightened and turned back to the speaker. "How are we out again? I thought we just filled our stores last week?"

"We did, but Ron's been over twice since then, and you know how much he eats," Memory-Luna said as she lifted the infant in her arms to her shoulder and patted her gently on the back.

Memory-Harry rolled his eyes. "You'd think he'd start bringing his own food now and again. It's hard enough to feed the five of us anymore since the Ministry Taboo-ed the _Gemino_ spell. Whose turn is it to go out and scavenge?"

"Technically mine," Memory-Hermione admitted, "but little Rosie here needs to eat, and you know how much she hates the bottle. You don't mind going for me, do you?"

"Not at all. No, Luna," Memory-Harry cut off Luna's attempts to interrupt, gesturing to the now slumbering infant in her arms, "you're still recovering from recasting the _Fidelius_ when Ron was here last. Besides, Iris looks so comfortable, I wouldn't want to be the reason she wakes up grumpy. I'll go."

"Take my bag with you," Memory-Hermione motioned to a beaded bag resting on the loveseat. "We're expecting the Weasley clan tonight for dinner, remember? It _is_ Halloween after all."

"Right," Memory-Harry said dejectedly, grabbing the sack and slinging the strap over his head. "Forgot about that. Guess I'm off then."

Memory-Harry gave his each of his beloveds a quick kiss, placing a gentle peck on the top of each of his daughters' heads.

"I love you," he smiled to the four before turning on the spot to apparate away.

" _Pausa!_ " Hermione panicked, halting the memory just as Memory-Harry began to spin, tears flowing freely as she committed the vision before her to whatever memory she had remaining. Confident she'd done the best she could, she turned to the still-frozen form beside her.

"Luna?" she asked releasing her grip on the witch's hand. "Go, Luna. You want to just as much as I do."

Luna moved forward as if in a trance, her eyes never leaving her memory-self or the small infant sleeping her arms. A feeling deep within her core grew and expanded as she approached, accompanied by a warmth she would never again forget.

She wasn't broken here.

Her daughter was perfect in every way. Fine black hair adorned her head, and her closed eyelids hid bright sliver irises flecked with deep emerald green. Somewhere deep inside Luna's intellect a severed connection found its mate, and feelings of pure love and protection filled her soul. She reached her hand forward gingerly and traced fingers through her daughter's hair, a name emblazoned on the inside of her mind.

"I'll always love you, Iris Pandora," she whispered to the memory.

Hermione watched Luna slowly walk toward her memory-self before her attention was completely consumed by her own avatar. She looked herself over, noting that the dark circles under her eyes and worry lines marring her face were almost completely suppressed by a shining expression of love and contentment. The child in her arms was exactly how she'd imagined her back at Hogwarts, back when her feelings for Harry lay hidden behind the walls of 'best friend', 'Boy-Who-Lived', and 'can-we-survive-another-day-in-this-insane-world', with her piercing emerald green eyes and thick golden-brown hair already showing the hints of unruly wildness.

Hermione smiled sadly to herself. Her daughter would have been a heartbreaker for sure, if only she'd had a chance to grow and live.

If only.

"Luna," she said softly to her companion, walking over and wrapping her arms around the younger witch from behind, "it's only going to get worse from here, and we haven't seen anything yet. Do you still want to go through this?"

Luna nodded, her fingers still tracing patterns through her daughter's hair. "I need to know, no matter how much it hurts. I'm better here. I want to be better again."

"Alright. Ready? _Resumis_ ," Hermione stated and the memory spun away with a small _pop_.

Memory-Harry appeared in an abandoned alleyway a half a dozen villages away and immediately tapped his wand to the top of his head, muttering _dissamuli_ as he did so. He strode purposefully out of the passage and down the street toward a nearby grocer, entering through the sliding doors and grabbing a metal basket, placing the beaded bag at the bottom, mouth open and waiting. As he began to move through the produce, taking what he could without drawing too much attention, his hand stilled, a feeling of unease sweeping though the scene. Hermione and Luna, following curiously behind the memory's motions, gasped in unison.

Something was wrong.

Very wrong.

Memory-Harry grabbed the beaded bag and fled the building, the metal basket clattering forgotten on the linoleum floor. Luna and Hermione were unceremoniously dragged along as the memory followed Harry's path back to the same alley he'd arrived in before spinning away, depositing them in the front yard of the home they'd left not twenty minutes before.

The cottage was almost unrecognizable. The air was unnaturally cold and frost covered all the windows, each glowing with a hellish blood-red light. The front door had been blown open, splinters of the grey wood littering the yard.

Memory-Harry cried out in anguish and charged, wand out and at the ready. Hermione and Luna, lost for a moment in their surprise, each drew their own and ran in behind him.

The scene before them stopped all three in their tracks; the Weasleys had arrived early, and not as friends. Memory-Luna and Hermione had both been stripped of their clothing, arms bound behind them, tears streaking down their shaking frames. Memory-Luna lay roughly on her back across the armchair Harry had sat comfortably in only moments ago, one of the twins surging between her legs as the other forcibly muffled her cries from the front, each holding a wand over the quaking witch between them. Memory-Hermione fared no better, having been thrown across the now-destroyed crib, a grinning Ron Weasley furiously pounding her from behind while a satisfied Percy sank himself around her protesting lips and throat. Behind the depraved foursome, Molly and Ginny chanted in unison around a demonic black-stone altar, their unclothed bodies doused in dark red blood. Atop the altar rested two small, shrouded forms, each glowing with the same blood-red light that so fervently penetrated through the now-frosted glass of the home.

"You were always meant to be mine, mudblood bint," Ron said darkly to the weakly resisting witch below him, "and now I'll be the last thing you ever feel. _Crucio._ "

The traitor's face filled with pleasure as the Cruciatus Curse impacted Memory-Hermione's frail form causing her to shake violently as every muscle in her body spasmed, her screams muffled as she struggled for a breath that never came.

The pure evil emanating from his former friend drove a stunned Harry to action, and unbridled rage and hatred overwhelmingly filled the memory. Without so much as a murmur, a bright green beam shot from Harry's wand, slamming into the ginger Secret Keeper, his lifeless body collapsing to the floor in a clump. Percy, seeing his youngest brother killed in front of him, pulled back and crouched behind the crib, using the still-shaking body of his victim as cover from the infuriated Boy-Who-Lived before firing a bone-breaking curse in his direction.

The dark blue curse was well aimed and forced Harry to dodge away, rolling into the kitchen. His motion brought him into full view of the perverted ritual in his dining room and he cast again without pause, another jet of green light leaping from his wand, snuffing out the life of his former crush and girlfriend. The ritual broken, Molly Weasley scrambled for her wand as two aqua curses shot through the opening between the rooms and detonated against the kitchen cupboards, showering Harry with debris, marring his face, arms, and clothing with dozens of small cuts and gouges.

Harry jabbed his wand forward a third time, and a third green jet leapt forward striking the Weasley matriarch as her hand closed around her wand, her falling body snapping the magical tool in two. A single _pop_ reverberated through the warzone signaling a fleeing Percy Weasley as Harry ran to the edge of the wall and peaked around the corner, spotting the twins cowering behind the overturned loveseat in the living room, the naked and shivering forms of his beloveds lying in front of them. Two grey piercing hexes shot toward Harry forcing him to dive back into the kitchen as they punched through the drywall where his head had been moments before. Rising swiftly he ran forward and crossed the open lane, blindly firing a lavender _diffindo_ at the two remaining traitors, aiming high to avoid hitting either of the two incapacitated women.

His efforts were rewarded with a cry of pain as one of the twins, George, clutched the left side of his head. Harry peaked around wall again to gauge the twins' next actions only to see their two sickly yellow spells already flying, not at him but at the two prone forms on the floor. Harry's attempts to shield the witches came too late, the two curses striking their targets and causing the women to simultaneously scream in pain. Harry's tormented cry buried the sound of the twins' escape, their presence forgotten as he grasped the women's hands and begged for them to recover.

"Don't leave me alone," he pleaded to the two barely breathing witches, their eyes clouded and unseeing. "Come back to me. Please."

Hermione and Luna had been shocked to silence as they viewed their rape, assault, and Harry's battle with the Weasleys in its full and terrible glory, their feet rooted to the floor as they clasped each other for comfort and strength.

"Don't do it," Hermione pleaded to Memory-Harry as he drew his wand and pointed it at her memory-self's head. "There has to be another way."

Memory-Harry paid no heed to the two viewers. "I don't even know if this will work, but I have to try. I hope you both will forgive me of what I'm about to do," he resigned. " _Obliviate. Stupefy._ "

Hermione's choked cry was smothered as Luna pulled her into a warm embrace. "It's ok, Mya," she said as she gently caressed the other woman's back, turning away as Memory-Harry obliviated and stunned her past-self. "It's over."

"Why? Why can't his life ever be easy? No," Hermione begged, her expression turning to horror as the events they had witnessed caught up to her. "No, no, no, no. They wouldn't, would they? Of all the …"

Anger quickly overwhelmed all other emotions and she pushed Luna away, her red puffy eyes filled with a fiery rage as she stalked over to the destroyed dining room, eyes unconsciously avoiding the altar at the center where a stone-faced Harry slowly and gently wrapped two small, unmoving forms in white conjured silk cloth.

"Luna, I'm going to kill them," she stated furiously. "Once we get out of this memory, I'm going to track them down and kill them, bring them back and kill them again. And maybe do it again for good measure. I knew that family was bad news right from the start. They shouldn't even have access to that ritual!"

"Mya," Luna said cautiously, "what are you talking about? They're already dead. You can't bring someone back from the dead unless they made a …" Luna's jaw dropped at the implication. "You think they made _horcruxes_?"

"I don't think, Luna. I _know_. Didn't you see they were all Marked?"

"No? I was a bit distracted by, oh I don't know, my own rape and sterilization, maybe?" Luna said hotly in response to Hermione's strange and inappropriate academic distraction.

Hermione took on a clinical, impassionate tone as she launched into a lecture, purposely ignoring Luna's incredulity. "We know that the Dark Mark is tied to their bearer's soul somehow, but we weren't quite sure how that worked exactly, right? Well, we just observed six people we knew quite well acting unnaturally. Well, maybe not all of them. The Carrows said that Ginny had been turned, what, three years before this?"

"Four," Luna corrected, the now intriguing postulate helping her overcome the terrible event they had just witnessed. "They got her at the start of my sixth year, when you and Harry were on the run."

"Four years then. And Ron has always had jealousy issues, so his actions are somewhat expected. He's pined over me for years, so I'm not surprised that he took the one chance he had to get into my pants," Hermione deadpanned. "But Percy? Fred and George? Molly performing a blood ritual? Something would have had to change them drastically. They could have been _Imperius_ -ed, certainly, but I didn't see any glazed-over eyes or resistive movements. A _horcrux_ though, that would darken their souls, driving out any good that may have resided there. Now the real question is –"

"Mya, I love that you're able to set your emotions aside when necessary, but I think you might want to see this," Luna interrupted as the scene changed, Harry's memory having continued playing through Hermione's lecture.

Hermione's jaw snapped shut and her cold and aloof demeanor collapsed as she found herself standing in the familiar grounds of St. Jerome's graveyard. Memory-Harry knelt in the damp grass, a small square of freshly-tilled earth lying beneath a newly formed gravestone placed just to the left of the well-worn marker of James and Lily Potter.

Tears flowed anew as Memory-Harry drew his wand and began to deftly carve the stone in front of him.

 _Rose Catherine Potter & Iris Pandora Lovegood  
b. 13 July 2001  
d. 31 October 2001_

 _Daddy will always love you_

"I'll never forget you," he whispered to the grave. "I'm sorry I wasn't there to protect you. I promise to take care of your Mummies however I can. One day we'll all be a family again, I promise.

"Take care of them Mum, Dad. I expect I'll see you all soon."

Memory-Harry rose slowly, trudging down the grass to a gravel path and gave one last lingering look at the tombstones before apparating away. The memory faded back into a grey, featureless void, leaving Hermione and Luna to their thoughts and each other.

"I," Luna sniffed softly. "I don't think he really believed we'd survived, Mya. To be alone, with so much evil surrounding him, it'd be worse than when I – when you – when –"

"Shhh," Hermione comforted the sobbing witch, "We found you then and we love you now, _ch_ _è_ _re lune_. You don't need to go back there."

"And we _did_ survive," she continued, holding Luna at arms' length and capturing her gaze with her own. "And Harry did too. As long as we've got each other, we'll last long enough to see those Dark Dimwits burn themselves out. I know it. I _know_ it."

Luna nodded weakly. "I'll see you out there, ok? I just need a bit of time here to gather my thoughts."

"Alright," Hermione responded, kissing Luna gently on the forehead, nose, and lips. "Don't be too long, ok? Harry and I might get bored."

Hermione caught the faintest of smiles before concentrating on pulling herself out of the pensive. She emerged quietly, her face deep in contemplation.

"Harry," she began, an inquiring expression blooming on her face, "I know I promised not to ask any questions, but, um, I'm not blaming you or anything, but, well," she paused and chewed on her lower lip nervously.

Harry raised an eyebrow at the unexpected reaction. "Yes?"

"Uh, why the Killing Curse? I know it did what you needed it to do, but what about the theory we had that it damages the soul?"

"Oh. I didn't even think about that, honestly. I didn't think about much at all. Just getting my family safe."

"I see," Hermione acknowledged quietly, falling back into her thoughts, an awkward silence filling the room.

Luna finally emerged from the pensive, her face a picture of passive consideration, and quietly settled back into her chair, making no move to engage either of the other two.

Moments became seconds, became minutes, and threatened to become hours before Harry coughed to break the stalemate.

"Why don't we all get some rest, eh?" he began a bit too jovially. "Sleep on today's events, and we can talk about this more in the morning. Come on, you two."

Harry held out his hands to help Luna and Hermione out of their chairs, but neither took nor even acknowledged the offer. He let his hands drop loosely to his side as the two witches rose wordlessly and exited the room, leaving him standing alone and hurt.

He raked a hand through his messy hair and sighed in exasperation.

 _I'll never understand women._

* * *

 **A/N:** As promised, Ch 4 should be up shortly. This is the darkest we're gonna get, but it's a pretty low bar. Time to climb slowly and inexorably back to the light.

As always, thank you for reading. Reviews, comments, PMs, and everything else are greatly appreciated, although I'll understand if you hold off until you've finished the next chapter. Thanks again!


	4. Chapter 4: Return to Sender

**A/N** : Not much preamble here. Last chapter was a rough one, so this should be a palette cleanser as we begin to slowly drag ourselves back into the light. Please enjoy the next installment of **Of Fae and Fervor**!

* * *

 **Chapter 4 – Return to Sender**

Luna woke first, dreams of her daughter rudely interrupted by a loud _snnkkt_ to her left. She looked at the pinnacle of wizard evolution beside her, with its gaping, drooling maw beneath an obsidian rat's nest, itself coated almost entirely by a massive forest of curly, walnut strands, and smiled warmly.

"Snnnkkkkkktt," the mouth said again.

Luna giggled before swinging her legs off the edge of the bed and summoning a pair of fuzzy vomit-colored troll-head slippers to her feet. She rose and stretched, moaning in pleasure as her joints realigned themselves.

"Ugh," said a yawning, female voice from behind the foul-breathing beast. "That is so _gross_ , Luna."

Luna smiled innocently at the grumpy voice, turning and skipping out of the room.

"Luna's up already?" Harry said groggily as he blindly felt around the nightstand for his wire-frame glasses.

"Apparently," came Hermione's annoyed response. She attempted to put her hair up into a loose ponytail, snapping one hairband before managing to get most of it away from her face. "I barely slept at all."

"Nightmares?"

"Yeah. And _someone_ kept hitting me in the face with their elbow. I have half a mind to stick it to your side if you keep it up."

"I'm sorry! I get hot!"

"Harry?" Luna's dreamy voice interrupted as she entered the room carrying a familiar silver bowl. "Can I ask you an important question?"

"Sure? Luna, you never have to ask permission to ask a question. Ever."

"I know, but this one is especially important. And it's about last night."

Harry nodded and emotionally braced himself for the inevitably painful question.

"Why was there a faerie in your memory?"

"A what?" Harry and Hermione said incredulously.

"A faerie. You know, pointy ears, purple eyes, white hair. Faerie."

"Luna, fairies have wings," Hermione admonished. "And besides, there weren't any fairies anywhere in that memory. I was there, remember?"

"He arrived after you left, Mya. And it's not fairies. It's _Faeries._ "

"That's the same thing!"

"'Mione," Harry began.

Luna raised her hand, silencing them both. "You're right, Mya, fairies have wings, dress in skimpy outfits, and glitter-bomb unsuspecting children."

Hermione snorted, but Luna continued unabated.

" _Faeries_ , however, serve the Fae Queen, Lilith, and she's not exactly kind. You know how you're not supposed to follow will-o'-the-wisps in the dark?"

Both Harry and Hermione nodded.

"That's what faeries look like in the real world. In the dreamworld though, they look like, well, this," she finished, pointing at the pensive in her hands.

Harry's eyes widened in recognition. "I saw one! After you two knocked me out, this morning, he said something about a messenger, and a bell. Here," he said quickly, drawing the memory from his temple. "Bring that over here and you two can take a look."

Luna plopped down onto the bed in front of Hermione and held the pensive to receive Harry's memory before placing it between the three of them. Hermione's curiosity peaked, she looked to Luna with a silent question before diving into the pensive uninvited, an indignant "hey!" heralding Luna entering seconds behind her. Harry was left once again with only the silence of the room to keep him company.

The pair soon emerged and began excitedly asking questions of a now bewildered Harry Potter.

"Why didn't you say something sooner?"

"Do you know how hard it is to speak to the Fae?"

"What did he mean, 'a boon'?"

"What bell do you think he's referring to?"

"Why 'I believe'?"

"Does pudding work in a pensive?"

"Do you think the Emissary is someone we know?"

"Does this dress make me look fat?"

"Luna."

"Can I have a puppy?"

"Luna?"

"Who gives better blowjobs?"

"Luna!"

"What? It's not like he was going to answer anything anyway. Look at him."

Hermione's frustrated grimace faltered as she looked at the stunned wizard and waved her hand in front of his face, a small smile breaking through.

"I think we broke him," she giggled.

"Again," Luna retorted, before poking Harry gently on the nose.

The physical touch broke the wizard out of his stupor and he shook his head to clear his mind.

"You know I can't keep up when you two go on like that. If you want me to actually answer a question, you're going to have to go slowly."

As Harry's gaze passed between the two smirking witches, a small silver glint from the center of the pensive drew his attention.

"Did either of you put anything in there while I was out of it?" he inquired, indicating the pensive.

"No," Hermione responded quickly. "Why?"

Harry reached forward and plucked a small hollow silver orb with a large cross cut in one hemisphere, a tiny metal bearing rolling within.

"Where did this come from then?"

Luna and Hermione shared a gasp.

"Do you," Luna began.

"After everything I've seen? Absolutely," Hermione responded in reverence. "He wouldn't even crack the top ten."

"Harry?" Luna turned and looked inquiringly at the wizard. "Do you?"

"Do I what?" Harry responded, peering closely at the metal sphere in his palm.

"Do you believe in Santa Claus?"

Harry laughed, then choked as he took in the serious expressions on the other witches faces.

"Wait, you're serious?"

"I've never been more serious than I am right now, Harry. Well, except that one time I polyjuiced myself as Lord Black and discussed pureblood politics with Walburga's portrait for an hour. Penises are weird."

Luna shrugged and continued on unaffected by Harry's dropping jaw or Hermione's poorly smothered giggles.

"So I need to know, Harry, and this is important. Do. You. Believe. In. Santa Claus."

Harry rubbed the back of his neck nervously as he searched for the appropriate words.

"I don't think I've ever believed in Santa, actually," he admitted. "You both know about my childhood, and the only gifts I ever got at Hogwarts were from friends or professors."

Hermione and Luna looked at Harry intently as he paused to ponder the question further.

"Wait, you think the messenger that guy was talking about is _Santa Claus_?"

"It makes sense," Hermione interjected. "You just pulled a sleigh bell out of the pensive, which should be impossible, I might add, and he's certainly a figure that requires belief. May I?" she said, gently taking the bell from Harry's hand and shaking is slightly, the musical sound of jingling bells filling the air around the trio.

Harry looked at the bell quizzically. "It doesn't work?"

Luna's jaw dropped as she gaped at Harry's innocent question.

"You can't hear it?" she asked incredulously. "Mya, he can't hear it. He really doesn't believe in Santa Claus. Harry," she said firmly, grabbing him tightly by the shoulders, "you need an intervention. Come on, up, UP! Quickly, there's no time to waste!"

Harry groaned and rolled out of bed, muttering quietly about Magic and it's obsession with providing a truth behind every imagination.

* * *

Harry and Hermione entered the greatroom together and sat across from a bouncing blonde Luna Lovegood.

"Harry," Luna began, a smirk firmly plastered on her glowing face. "I'm about to blow your mind. Ready! Too late! _I believe_ ," she finished conspiratorially, jingling the sleigh bell softly as she did so.

The floo roared to life with dark purple flames as the musical sound of dozens of sleigh bells filled the room. The trio spun to face the portal, wands drawn, as a tall salt-and-pepper bearded man dressed in an open, fern-dyed animal skin robe and a roughspun cotton tunic stepped deftly through the fire.

"Ho, ho, ho!" he chucked loudly at the stunned trio. "I didn't think you were ever going to call!"

"That is _not_ Santa Claus," Harry deadpanned.

Hermione rolled her eyes.

" _Obviously_ , Harry," she stressed sarcastically. "That's Father Christmas. Did you think that American caricature was actually real?"

"In his defense," Luna interjected, "we did ask him about Santa, not Father Christmas."

"Now, now, young casters," the mirthful man chuckled. "Such a boring topic to argue about!"

He straightened to his full height and puffed his chest out slightly.

"Allow me to properly introduce myself. I am called Nicholoas of Myra, proud servant of Her Majesty Queen Lilith, although I am better known as Sinterklaas, Saint Nicholas, Father Christmas, and yes, Santa Claus."

"Hold on," Harry said disbelievingly, "you're telling me that an evil fairy is well known around the world for giving children gifts?"

"Harry!" Luna admonished, smacking him roughly on his shoulder. "Don't be rude! And he's a _Fae_ , not a fairy. I thought we just went over this?"

"I still don't understand the difference either, Luna," Hermione admitted quietly.

Luna threw her hands up in the air. "I'm surrounded by heathens!"

Nicholoas' laughter rang through the castle. "Little casters, you'll have to try much harder to cause me any discomfort or harm! Now, I believe we should get down to the true reason for my visit here, yes?"

Harry coughed to cover his embarrassment. "Sure. Uh, what, exactly can we do for the Queen of the Fae? Luna says she's supposed to be, like, super-powerful or something?"

"I did not say –"

"Do any of you know about faerie magic?" Nicholoas asked, cutting off a defensive Luna.

The three magicals shook their heads in denial.

"No? Hmm," the Fae tapped his chin thoughtfully, pondering how best to explain the complex and otherworldly concept of faerie magics to the mortals before him.

"Your magic comes from your inner selves, correct? Not your souls or your lives, but a third part."

"Basically," Hermione nodded in response. "We call it our magical core. It's loosely tied to our lives and souls, but for the most part exists independently."

"That sort of separation doesn't exist for the Fae. Our magic _is_ our life _and_ our soul. It's one and the same. If we were to ever lose it, we'd perish."

"That's why the fae appear immortal then!" Luna said excitedly. "Since it's all tied together, regenerating your magic literally regenerates your life as well!"

"Exactly right, young caster! However, there's another important factor to consider: our magic is bound to that of our Queen. What we feel, she feels."

"That would explain why she's known for being such a harsh mistress then," Hermione interjected. "If I felt every time Luna or Harry drained their magic or got hurt somehow, I'd be short on patience too."

"So you can imagine then what kind of suffering my Queen must be under when your Dark Lord started experimenting on the Fae."

"That's why we kept hearing about how faerie magic was more potent than our normal magic," Harry revealed.

"And it makes sense too," Luna continued the train of thought. "If we could draw on our soul and life as well as magic, we'd be pretty powerful as well."

"So what does Lilith want us to do then?" Hermione inquired, crossing her arms under her bosom. "If she's looking for three grunts to assault Riddle head-on, she's going to have to find a new patsy."

"Nothing of the sort!" Nicholoas laughed. "Her Majesty is far more nefarious than that. No, her plan for you three is simple: you will travel to your past and destroy this Dark Lord before he has a chance to begin his experiments on the Fae."

Hermione snorted in derision. "Travelling that far back in time is impossible."

"Hermione," _Harry_ , of all people, explained. "You travelled back in time three or four times a day, almost every day, for our _entire third year_. And," he continued over her attempts at protest, "you're sitting here in a _castle_ , with a stick that can _conjure objects from nothing_ resting on your arm, while talking to _Santa Claus_. Not to mention, we're talking about killing a guy that _literally came back from the dead_. At this point, I don't think anything is impossible anymore."

"Umgublular Slashkilters, Harry. I made those up, remember?" Luna pointed out.

Nicholoas made an obvious show of not looking at anyone.

"They're _real_!?"

"Not now, Luna," Hermione sighed. "You've made your point, Harry. So, Mister Nicholoas, how to we 'travel back in time'?"

"Just Nicholoas is fine, young one. I'll need to make sure we can actually send you back, first. Give me a moment."

Nicholoas reached into one of the large pockets lining the inside of his animal-skin robe, pulling out a large, perfectly formed amethyst crystal.

"Here we are! Just grab ahold, one at a time. If it glows, we can proceed."

Hermione went first, gripping the crystal tightly between her hands. A dozen seconds later, a bright white glow shone from the center of the amethyst.

"Excellent!" Nicholoas congratulated. "Who's next?"

"I'll go," Harry said quietly as he reached for the purple crystal, holding it firmly in his hands.

Minutes passed, yet no glow came to the fore.

"I thought that might be the case," Harry said distantly. "It's soul-based, isn't it? You were right, 'Mione, the Killing Curse does damage your soul. Here, Luna, at least it should work for you."

Luna gingerly took the amethyst from Harry's outstretched hands and held it gently in front of her, anxiously awaiting that selfsame glow that Hermione had so easily produced.

After a few minutes of willing and hoping, Luna passed the amethyst back to Nicholoas.

"I guess I'm too broken for it to work properly," she said sadly.

Harry moved over to Luna's side and lifted her up, sliding into the seat beneath her and wrapping his arms tightly around her. Luna curled into his embrace and nestled her head into the hollow between his neck and shoulder.

"We'll be ok, Luna. Even if only 'Mione goes back, we'll be able to get together even earlier! Think about how great Hogwarts will be with the three of us supporting one another!" he said attempting to cheer the dejected blonde.

"I'm not going without you two," Hermione said firmly.

"'Mione," Harry attempted.

"No. I'm not leaving you, especially now that I know you've been hiding that memory from Luna and I for seven years. Either we all go, or no one does."

"Hermione," Harry tried again.

"So you refuse our generous offer?" Nicholoas stated grimly, arms spread wide in a gesture of grandness.

"No!" Harry denied fervently.

"Yes!" Hermione responded with equal intensity.

"No," Luna said softly, just loud enough for everyone to hear. "You have to go, Mya. For me and for them."

"Nicholoas, does this have to be done right now?" Harry asked, his question penetrating the silence following Luna's quiet statement.

"No, but soon. Samhain approaches and fae magic wanes. If you are to do this, you must complete the ritual while there is still enough to send you back."

Nicholoas reached once again into his robe and retrieved three spheres, each formed of intertwined vines and translucent leaves and glowing with a small, pulsing, golden yellow light.

"My presence here must come to an end, young casters. Three fae have given themselves to power the ritual. As long as the light remains, so too does their magic."

The fireplace roared again with the same dark purple flames that heralded the fae's arrival.

"The Magic of the Fae wanes even now. Do not delay overlong, or all shall be lost. Farewell, young ones," Nicholoas finished and disappeared into the wall of fire.

"So," Harry began, turning to Hermione, Luna still curled up in his lap. "What are we supposed to do again?"

Luna giggled softly as Hermione groaned and smacked her forehead against the table.

* * *

Even with the spectre of Samhain hanging over them it was still well into October before the trio had finished their preparations. Less than a fortnight before the imposed deadline, they were finally ready.

They'd assembled everything outside in the courtyard, the open environment a crucial requirement of the faerie magic. At the base of a vertically-bisected equilateral triangle, a perfect circle inscribed within, lay the three weakly glowing orbs placed each on an intersection of two lines. Across the symbol stood a white, cotton robed and barefoot Hermione, a stoic look adorning her face.

"Are you ready, Mya?" Luna asked, adjusting one of the orbs a final time.

"No," Hermione said shortly.

"I'm not happy about this either, 'Mione, but this is our chance to set things right," Harry said. "Go back, find Luna and I, win the war, and we can all live happily ever after. I trust you, Hermione Granger, implicitly, and I always have. My past self will believe you."

Harry stepped forward and kissed her fully, their lips lingering before he withdrew and backed away.

"I've always loved you, 'Mione, even if I didn't know it at the time. You'll be amazing."

Luna gave Harry the barest space to step away before she pounced and claimed Hermione's recently exposed lips fiercely, causing the older witch to stumble back slightly.

"Find me when you get there," Luna said breathlessly as she broke the kiss and embraced Hermione tightly. "I might not know you two yet, depending on when you arrive, but this … _us_ … is inevitable. Now get going," she continued, smacking Hermione firmly on her rear, "be amazing for us."

Luna stepped back to stand beside Harry and they both looked to Hermione expectantly.

"I love you both," Hermione began, pulling off the robe and tossing it away. She moved to the point of the symbol, standing naked and proud, eyes facing forward and away from the two, lest her emotions overwhelm her.

"I'll see you on the other side. And Harry? It's Potter. _Peregrinabor_!" she shouted, stretching her arms out to either side.

The symbol blazed to life with bright blue light, bathing everything around it, and Hermione felt herself freeze in place, an ancient form of _petrificus totalus_ keeping her body still for the ritual. At the base of the symbol the light from the three orbs began to fade as it was pulled into the symbol, their golden glow pushing slowly down the lines toward Hermione. With the glow only halfway to its destination, the left orb winked out followed shortly by the right, their weakened magic utterly consumed by the ritual. Two of the three supporting magical sources gone, the blue glow began turning red and the ground shook fiercely, the ritual searching for any magical power to draw upon. A crack of black lightning shot across the space overhead and the sky darkened before the sound of shattering glass filled the air. Around them the castle walls groaned as the earth continued to shake, a few of the looser battlements breaking off and slamming into the soft dirt beneath them.

"Luna!" Harry shouted over the din, stumbling slightly over the rumbling earth. "The _fidelius_ just collapsed! We have to get more power to the ritual!"

It only took Luna a moment to realize what needed to be done. She spared a glance to the petrified figure standing at the symbol's point before quickly conjuring two silver daggers and handing one to Harry, receiving a questioning look from the wizard in turn.

"It's the only way! The ritual needs magic _and_ life to work!" she shouted in response.

"Can't we try another time?!"

"No! It'll kill her to find the power! I'm not about to let that happen!"

Harry looked forlornly at the petrified form of Hermione.

"Alright, what do I need to do?"

"Take the far point. I'll take the near one, and we'll have to do it simultaneously. Make sure you strike true, Harry, right about here," she indicated to a point halfway between his navel and sternum. "Don't miss and it'll be quick and mostly painless. Ready?"

Harry didn't want to even begin to consider why or how Luna knew the exact point for self-sacrifice and only nodded in response, kissing her quickly before speeding over to his place as fast as the rolling ground allowed.

Hermione could only look on as the two most important people in her life ran into her line of vision wielding sharp, gleaming, silver daggers. She saw Luna mouth something to her that looked suspiciously like an apology, but any further analysis was lost as Luna and Harry nodded to each other and as one plunged the daggers deep within their stomachs, each collapsing as their lifeblood poured from their wound onto the ground.

Hermione screamed inside her head in horror and disbelief as tears poured down her petrified cheeks. The stalled golden glow began moving once again, all three lines pressing forward with an increasing velocity, slamming together as they reached the point and shooting through Hermione's body and beyond in a pillar of light. Hermione managed one last glance through tear-blurred eyes at her fallen lovers before euphoria overtook her and the world faded into blinding white nothingness.

* * *

Hermione woke with a start, her breath coming in short gasps as she lay in sweat-soaked sheets. She collapsed back onto the firm mattress and flat polyester pillow, sighing deeply as her mind whirled with visions of what she'd just experienced.

 _Time travel, faeries, Father Christmas, and a horrible nightmare,_ she thought, closing her eyes and snorting softly to herself. _I'm getting as bad as Luna. If I'm awake anyway, at least I can cuddle with Harry and steal some of his heat. It's a bit cooler this morning than I thought it would be_. She shuffled to the side slightly before rolling to her left, her arm outstretched to wrap around the warm body next to her.

And promptly fell out of bed with a surprised _eep!_

The embarrassed witch sprang to her feet, finally taking in her surroundings. She stood next to one of five four-poster beds, each pressed against a separate wall, draped with scarlet privacy curtains, and flanked by two narrow windows. At the foot of each bed rested a large wooden trunk, and on one side stood a small wooden nightstand.

Hermione was standing in the Gryffindor Girls' Dormitory.

She'd made it.

Hermione was about to _whoop_ for joy when her glee was doused in the dour waters of reality. If she'd actually travelled back in time, then _her_ Harry and Luna were dead, sacrificed to power the ritual. If she hadn't, the last 15 years or so of her perceived life had all been a both amazing and terrible dream.

She sat down heavily on the edge of her bed, confusion ruling her thoughts.

 _Alright, Hermione. I know_ where _I am, but_ when _am I?_

She looked down at herself, dressed in a long, loose pale salmon nightgown, and ran a hand down the front of her torso before dipping underneath and settling her fingers between her legs.

 _Well the girls are present and perky, so that's a good start, although they're a bit smaller than they were, well,_ before _. I_ did _have a daughter though, so, probably not a good comparison. Bit of hair between my legs and, oh Morgana, I haven't shaved in months! Ugh! Right, probably somewhere between second and fourth year then. Now, what time of year is it?_

Hermione's musings were rudely interrupted by a terrified and very girly scream from somewhere in the tower.

"Aaaaarrrrgghhhh! Noooo!"

Hermione collapsed backwards onto her bed and sighed heavily.

 _Third Year._

* * *

 **A/N** : We finally made it! Hogwarts, Third Year, and someone's just been attacked and has woken up all of Gryffindor. I wonder who that could possibly be?

As always, reviews, comments, and everything else are appreciated and encouraged. Your actions keep me motivated!

Thanks for reading!


	5. Chapter 5: Time Stops For No Woman

**A/N:** I'd like to apologize for the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Chapter I posted here previously. I'm much happier with this one, though not completely. What kind of person would I be if I was completely happy with my work? (I'd be a lot less stressed, that's for sure. And probably have a lot more time too. Must be nice.) There's so much more I want to say, but an A/N in a chapter isn't the appropriate place to do it. As such, I've started a blog where I'll be posting longer thoughts, if you're interested in viewing them. The link can be found on my profile page here on FFN.

 **Spells:**

Enwrapture Curse: Tightens the cursed item around the wearer. Harmful to deadly when cast on jewelry.  
 _Tellero Vellum_ : Shearing Charm. Intended for Sheep. Useful for Humans. Probably Welsh.  
 _Tergeo Placidium_ : Cleans. Shampoos. Exfoliates. Awesome.  
 _Vestio Breva_ : Clothes-Curling Hex. Self-explanatory. Slow-working.  
Obscuring Charm: Auror-level. Effect is in the name. Surprisingly high skill requirement.

 **Disclaimer:** I'm thankful for the opportunity to play around in the sandbox that is the Harry Potter Universe. Apologies to those authors whose ideas I have unintentionally incorporated.

Please enjoy the second-fifth installment of **Of Fae and Fervor**!

* * *

 **Chapter 5 – Time Stops For No Woman**

The early morning passed at an inexorably slow pace. Hermione had closed the drapes around her bed and, for the first time in either existence, attempted to silence her small domain against the din of four young witches moving about the dorm far earlier than necessary. To her surprise, the spell fizzled out as soon as it landed, a sure sign that Hogwarts didn't look too fondly on any nighttime incursions, although why the broom closets were still charmable made little sense.

Hermione shook her head slightly in mock disbelief as she sat against her headboard. _When has the magical world_ ever _made a lick of sense? It's not like it stopped poor Sally-Anne Perks from getting pregnant and dropping out in fifth year._

As if on cue, Sally-Anne's soft alto rose above the racket.

"Lav," she teased, "if you're so worried about Ron, just go crawl into bed with him. I'm sure he won't mind. He's only been staring at your chest all year, and I'm sure he'd appreciate a couple more _pillows_."

Hermione heard a high pitched squeak, Lavender's, followed by two thumps and quickly drawn drapes.

 _Exactly the same as last time,_ she realized. The memory was surprisingly clear; Lavender Brown, half her long, flaxen hair up in curlers, a pair of gaping salmon lips contrasting lovely with scarlet flushed cheeks, blindly grasping Pavarti Patil's coffee-toned hand before diving into the privacy of her bed, crimson curtains tearing slightly at being pulled roughly together. Hermione couldn't help but giggle at the recollection.

A hushed pair of whispers and the sound of shuffling feet approached her sanctuary. "Hermione?" a light, feminine voice asked hesitantly.

Hermione's mind reeled at the address, searching for a face, a name to attach to the familiar voice. Who else was here? She knew she had four roommates: Lavender, Pavarti, Sally-Anne, and – and –

"Something happened to Ron. I'm coming in."

Hermione's mind connected just as a pale-skinned, blue-eyed, pixie-haired brunette pulled back the covering around her bed, memory flooding her vision.

 _Hermione and Harry could see the towers of Hogwarts peeking through the forest canopy. Traversing the Forbidden Forest probably wasn't the smartest decision they'd made, but they needed to get the Diadem, and that was in the castle. The plan was simple: get to the Whomping Willow, travel back to the Shrieking Shack, then to Honeydukes, and finally into Hogwarts._

 _They'd only encountered a couple of Acromantula packs, but a few well-placed_ incendios _pulled them away. Thank Merlin for Invisibility Cloaks._

 _The pair breached the forest border and slowly made their way to the Willow under the cover of darkness. From a distance, the ancient tree looked ominous in the moonless night, twisted and gnarled branches hanging grimly, bathed in the dim orange glow of the castle. On closer approach, the true horror revealed itself. Buried within the still limbs of the Willow, dozens of corpses hung from ropes and chains like vile and twisted ornaments on a needleless mockery of a yule tree._

 _Before Hermione could stop him, Harry cast a dim_ lumos _, revealing the closest body in all its macabre glory._

 _The body of Fay Dunbar._

 _Her naked corpse hung loosely from manacled wrists, her fair skin mottled with ugly purple bruising and congealed bloody wounds. A milky-white substance had trickled down from between her legs, her lips, and from two gaping incisions in her armpits, barely mixing with her own blood before drying, evidence enough of the poor girl's suffering. Her blue eyes, once full of life, were clouded, open wide with terror at the moment of her demise._

 _Hermione's knees weakened at the sight and she felt her stomach rebel. Harry, realizing his error,_ nox-ed _his wand and managed to catch his companion before she collapsed._

Hermione snapped back to reality as she realized Fay was still talking to her.

"He's ok, Hermione," Fay continued. She must have missed most of what Fay had been telling her. Something about Ron? "Are you ok? You're looking a bit pale."

Hermione's stomach clenched again. This wasn't part of the memory anymore. With a look of apology to Fay, Hermione leapt from the bed, rushing past a concerned Sally-Anne to the washroom, just managing to hunch over the porcelain before she threw up.

By the time Hermione returned to her dorm, her roommates had thankfully all returned to their bunks. She managed to catch a few hours of precious sleep before rising with the sun, a feat helped along by her alarm pillow quite literally beating her awake. She rose quietly and began her morning routine, adding only the Shearing Charm, _Tollero Vellum_ , she had learned from Luna that made personal grooming quick, simple, and painless. Hermione emerged showered, smooth, and ready to begin her first, second day as a fourteen-year-old third year witch whose only job was to save everyone she ever knew and loved from death, destruction, and darkness.

No pressure.

 _Alright, Hermione_ , she told herself. _New timeline, new opportunities, and no one's dead yet. Keep your mind straight, you're lucky enough to get another shot at this. No more flashbacks like this morning._

She grabbed a few rolls of parchment paper and a no-fill quill she must have received from Scrivenshafts at some point and headed down the stairs. There were only a handful of upper years in the Common Room, and she received a few cursory good mornings as she loitered about, faintly hoping that Harry would perhaps wake early and she'd be able to catch him before the rest of Gryffindor rose and began their own day. Looking around the room, she spotted a cushy chair-and-a-half near the base of the boys' stair and plopped down, quill in mouth, pondering her next move.

* * *

Harry was certain the universe hated him.

How could it not? Nearly four months had passed since Ron had all but exiled Hermione from their group. In that short time he'd managed to arrest his plunging grades at just above Poor level and barely stumble through the Patronus Charm, not to mention his newfound apprehension for Grim-shaped shadows. He wanted – no, he _needed_ Hermione back in their good graces, if only to return a semblance of normalcy to the daily insanity that was the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Even Quidditch no longer felt the same, knowing that Hermione wouldn't be there to cheer him on or greet him after the match. Even though she said she had attended the match the night before last, he was fairly certain she was lying to him: her bookmark had to have moved at least two hundred pages while he was zooming around the pitch.

Harry smiled a bit at that. Hermione, for all her bluster about Quidditch taking up valuable study time, was a voracious Gryffindor fan and frequently put the rest of the house to shame in her fanaticism, even going so far as to help enchant flags and signs for anyone who asked.

Frankly, she put Ron and his Chudley Cannon-worship to shame. Not going to a match must have been killing her.

Harry shifted under his covers and looked at his trunk, where the Broomstick That Started It All rested quietly, locked, safe, and secure.

 _A Really Fast Broomstick,_ Harry's traitorous thoughts pondered. _A really fast, really maneuverable, definitely-not-from-Sirius-Black broomstick. A broomstick that's apparently worth more to you than Hermione's friendship. Not that you needed that anyway. I'm sure you'd have been perfectly fine solving Snape's Potions Puzzle or discovering that a Basilisk was slithering though the castle pipes._

Harry snorted. _In your dreams._

Harry's mind wandered, unbidden, to the few particular dreams he'd had over the intervening months: how he would invite the brunette witch to conquer her fear of flying with a slow evening cruise over the Black Lake, landing gently in a soft flowery meadow just inside the boundary of the Forbidden Forest, how she'd blush adorably whenever their eyes met, her deep chocolate eyes drawing him toward her, how those same orbs would darken with anticipation as she lowered herself down his body, a pair of luscious rosy lips wrapping themselves around his –

 _Friend!_ Harry visibly jerked as he plastered any thought that came to mind over the erotic images, attempting to disrupt the dangerous line of thinking he had kept locked away since early in their first year. _Off limits! Ron!_

Oily, straight ginger hair replaced the bobbing bushy brunette as light caramel skin morphed smoothly into a pale canvas marred with countless dark freckles, chapped lips now firmly clamped –

Bleach wouldn't be enough. Maybe Lockhart was taking visitors?

Harry rolled out of bed with an unwilling groan. The attack, if you could call Black turning Ron's bedcurtains into a doily 'an attack', had kept the dorm awake far into the early morning. Each room in the tower had been methodically searched, revealing only that Black had entered the Tower thanks to Sir Cadogan's penchant for new, complex passwords and Neville's sieve-like memory. Harry himself had barely managed enough rest to open the washroom door yet, _impossibly_ , Ron was already awake, dressed, and headed out to the Common Room. It looked like he'd even _showered_ , and it was only Monday!

Harry's thoughts whirled as the soap bar flew from his hands and plopped wetly on the tile shower floor for the third time that morning. _Why would Black slash Ron's bed, anyway?_ he thought as he crouched carefully on the slippery tiles to retrieve the fallen bar. _Everyone knows he's after me, and our names are_ literallycarved _at the end of the bed. Maybe Azkaban took away his ability to read?_

 _Don't be daft, Harry,_ said an internal voice that sounded remarkably like an annoyed Hermione Granger. _How could he read the list of passwords then? And you've gone and dropped it again. Well done._

Harry could feel Imaginary-Hermione roll her eyes at him as he stared hopelessly at the offending soap, a trail of bubbles sliding slowly toward the shower drain.

 _Yep. Definitely hates me._

* * *

Luna was having a great morning.

Of course, 'great' was relative to how the rest of the day went, but it was certainly better than just 'a morning'. She'd managed to find enough clothing to put together a full outfit: a white button-down blouse and a pair of pastel polka-dot panties behind one of the sinks in the washroom, a pair of black flats, one lavender sock, and her blue-and-bronze Ravenclaw tie under her dormmate Anahi Ballard's bed, and a lime green sock and her lacy leopard-print bra between couch cushions in the Common Room. She upended her pillowcase, spilling her black workrobe and her grey woolen v-neck jumper and pleated skirt onto her bedsheets. Her pillow had disappeared only a few days into the Autumn Term, but Luna had slept on harder objects than woven wool on her father's expeditions. This was almost luxurious by comparison.

 _Thank Circe for small miracles though,_ she thought gratefully. The Nargles hadn't become bold enough to start stealing items from literally under her nose yet, although placing a temporary Enwrapture Curse on her outerwear seemed to keep them away.

 _Though Cho Chang's scarf did look a bit restricting a few weeks ago. Maybe the Nargles replaced her House Scarf with mine? That sounds like something they'd do._

Even her shower had been positively pleasant. She lingered in the lukewarm spray, a fantastic contrast to the ice-cold dribble that normally heralded her daily cleansing, long after she'd cast _tergeo placidium_ and _tollero vellum_ , the former an invention of her mother's and the latter a family trick passed down for generations, on herself.

Dressing smartly, she took the stairs two at a time, arriving with a _thump_ to an unusually empty Common Room.

Luna's brows furrowed. "Hello?" she inquired to the vacant room.

The silence that greeted her was disconcerting. _Where is everyone?_ she mused. _Probably celebrating some holiday I forgot, or one they didn't tell me about. Or perhaps they're still excited that they lost the match on Saturday? Or maybe just that Harry Potter won?_

Luna blushed lightly as she recalled the bright emerald eyes and beaming smile that had passed her gaze, searching the stands for a particular face.

 _Hermione Granger, probably_. She blushed deeper as an image of the bushy-haired brunette sprang into her mind, chocolate eyes bright with intelligence and compassion, light caramel skin surely as smooth as acromantula silk. Luna felt her chest tighten and her stomach twist itself into a knot at the glowing visage.

She'd idolized the brilliant witch since her Sorting. The Gryffindor had established herself as one of the top twenty-five students ever in every class except Potions, and even then managed a respectable top one hundred under the well-known, biased tutelage of Professor Severus Snape. She'd even surpassed the legendary Lily Potter in Transfiguration and Charms, a feat that her father had been raving about for the entire summer before her own first year.

The Quibbler had been filled with articles about "The Fall of Pureblood Supremacy" and "The Age of the Muggleborn". There was even a small anonymous article that her father had managed to elicit from a recent Hogwarts graduate that claimed the term 'muggle' was an artifact of an age when non-magicals were considered no better than livestock, making the phrase 'muggleborn' little better than 'savage'. The author had put forth the terms 'no-maj' and 'firstborn' as an acceptable replacements, but her father continued to print 'muggle' and 'muggleborn' respectively, claiming that his readers wouldn't understand the distinction.

Luna suspected her father was actually worried about the blowback from established purebloods. She knew their benefactors were prominent Neutral families, likely Greengrass, Burke, or Fawley, but whenever they arrived at the Rookery she'd been confined to her room for the duration of their stay. She'd have to ask someone about which term they preferred. Maybe one of the upper years. _Definitely_ not Granger. A rejection from her wasn't one Luna was sure she would be able to handle.

Shaking her head slightly to regain her focus, Luna returned to her concentration to the Case of the Mysteriously Absent Ravenclaws. She methodically worked her way around the empty room, looking behind couches and under chairs for her missing housemates. She'd stuck her head well inside the red-brick fireplace, craning upward to spot any feet dangling down from the chimney when a cough from behind startled her. She jerked upward and back, slamming her head painfully against the side of fireplace, a large sooty streak appearing from her cheek to her jaw.

"Looking for your friends, _Looney?_ " the unmistakable taunting of fourth year Marietta Edgecombe punctured the silence. "Oh, right. You don't have any. You should be careful with your bum in the air like that, someone might take it as an _invitation_."

Luna turned to face the vile insinuator, eyes faintly watery from the goose egg she could feel growing on the back of her head. Marietta didn't miss it.

"Oh, don't cry already, Looney. I haven't even done anything yet!"

She looked around at the empty room, making sure they were still alone.

"Before I hex you," Marietta said thoughtfully, tapping her wand on her chin, "I should probably tell you that someone in Gryffindor was attacked by Sirius Black last night. No one knows who the target was, but I'm hoping that bitch Granger has a few more holes in her than she had last night. Would serve her right, stupid Gryffindors showing up us Ravenclaws."

Luna was petrified. Black had entered Gryffindor Tower and attacked someone? It couldn't be Hermione, he wouldn't be able to get up the stairs. He'd go after Harry then, right? Finish what he started all those years ago?

Luna felt her stomach clench again at the thought. _I don't want either of them to be attacked,_ she silently pleaded, no longer focused on the bully in front of her.

"Tsk, tsk, Looney." Marietta's admonishment brought Luna's thoughts back to the danger at hand. "Off in la la land already? Ah well, I shouldn't be surprised, really. It's amazing the Sorting Hat managed to get anything at all out of that airy head of yours. Pay attention if you can. Ready? _Vestio Brevia._ "

A bright pink spell shot from Marietta's wand and struck Luna's skirt, flowing completely over the wool before fading. Luna looked down, seeing the bottom edge of her uniform slowly begin to curl inward and wrap up on itself.

"Don't forget, Looney," Marietta taunted from the top of the spiral staircase leading out of the Common Room, "'skirts must be knee length or longer at all times'. Good luck!" she giggled as she left.

Luna shrugged to herself, sighing dramatically. _Better than antlers or a tail, at least_.

Maybe it was just a 'good' morning.

* * *

Hermione had only managed to write one word in the half an hour she'd sat waiting for Harry: Wormtail. Was it alright for her to take him out before Voldemort resurrected? How would that affect this timeline? Would he even still be around? Last time she'd found him cowering in Hagrid's milk jug, but that was a month and a half from now. Where did he go in the meantime?

A large orange ball of fluff leapt into her lap and Hermione absently stroked it. How in Merlin's name was she going to track down a _rat_ in a _castle_ , who also knew about the Map and the secret passages?

Crookshanks lifted his head and looked intently up at her, as if even _he_ couldn't believe Hermione's daftness.

Hermione smirked as she answered her own inquiry. _Of course._ Her cat would know, right? He knew the rat was unnatural and had been trying to tell her that the entire year. How had she forgotten that so easily?

Oh. Right _._

 _That._

"Crooky," she purred to the orange furball, "I need you to go find Scabbers for me, ok? Don't eat him, just bring him to me when you do. Please?"

Crookshanks looked at her blankly in response.

"Why do I even bother," Hermione whinged as she slouched back into the chair. "Just go find the stupid rat, ok?"

She picked the oversized cat off her lap and placed him on the floor, waving him away. "Go on, get! And no eating him!"

Crookshanks sauntered away, head held high as Hermione turned her attention back to the parchment, completely missing the third year ginger spying the end of her interaction with the part-kneazel.

"Hermy!" Ron said as he approached, Hermione visibly wincing at the despised nickname. She looked up quickly, spotting the lanky redhead striding toward her. Her mind flashed back, throwing a sadistic grin over his young features before she managed to force it away. That wasn't _this_ Ron. Not yet.

Her internal struggle had the unfortunate side effect of eliminating any possible escape from the undesired encounter. She couldn't recall exactly what their relationship was at this point. Should she smile? Grimace? Frown? Flirt? _Definitely NOT flirt,_ she shuddered. _Ew._

Hermione took a deep breath and settled on what she hoped was a neutral expression as Ron came ever closer to her seat.

 _First test, Hermione. Don't fuck it up._

"Finally realizing that rat-eating monster is a nuisance, eh?" Ron said, flailing his arms about in an attempt to indicate a global opinion. Hermione had to dodge her head back slightly to avoid one particularly wild limb. "Apology accepted. Now, listen to this. Last night, in our dorm, there was an attack. By Black. On me." Ron stood proudly in front of her, waiting for some form of congratulation or concern.

Hermione rolled her eyes at the mentally challenged child in front of her. Ron missed the obvious gesture of annoyance and continued unabated.

"Me! Not Harry, me! Hermy, I'm gonna be famous! Move over, I'll tell you all about it."

Hermione made no such movement, yet to her continued horror the oblivious ginger made to sit next to her on the room-for-an-intimate-two chair anyway. She had no choice but to scoot as far over as possible to avoid Ron landing in her lap; _that_ would have been unacceptable, even if he was getting a probably-undeserved second chance.

To her dismay, a crowd had begun to gather as more of Gryffindor woke and began their day, Ron's overloud voice drawing in the curious.

"So I'm just lying there, right?" Ron launched back into his 'harrowing' tale, addressing the assembly as much as his chair-mate. "And I'm having this great dream about winning the Quidditch World Cup, and all these beautiful girls are there telling me how great of a job I did keeping the other team scoreless. You were there too, Hermy."

Hermione visibly gagged at the thought, eliciting chuckles from the audience. If Ron had noticed, any response was quickly overcome by the taunting from unmistakable and identical voices in the back of the now rather large crowd.

"Oh, Ron"

"You're so great, Ron"

"Can I get you anything, Ron?"

"Will you let me suck your co–"

"So anyway!" Ron's voice cracked as he attempted to break through the laughter at the twins' antics, ears and cheeks burning a fiery scarlet.

Glancing to the back of the throng, Hermione spotted Percy hauling two protesting twins to the portrait, one ear grasped firmly in each hand, and pursed her lips. _How much of Ron's jealously was Harry, and how much was his position in the family? It's_ is _now, I guess, but that's something to consider. Can I save him from himself?_ Do _I save him from himself?_ Her focus turned back to Ron as he managed to regain some control of the chuckling crowd.

" _Anyway,_ I'm raising the Cup, right? And I hear this bloke behind me go 'I'm going to kill you slowly, traitor', so I spin around and see a dark haired guy with glasses."

Harry chose at that moment to appear at the base of the stairs, directly into Ron's line of vision. "Heya, Harry!" Ron shouted at the bespectacled wizard. "He looked just like you, actually. Just a bit older. Late twenties, early thirties maybe? Anyway, he's got his wand out, but I'm faster, and I _expilliarmus_ it right out of his hand. So what does the bloke do? He hits me! With a fist! In the face!

"So of course I wake up, and standing over me with a knife as long as my forearm, is Sirius Black!"

"How did you know it was him?" shouted a voice from the back of the crowd.

"Oh, well, my dad works for the Ministry," Ron said proudly, sitting a bit straighter, "so we've all been given mockups of how he could change his looks, but really, he looked just like he did on the front page of the Prophet. Long, greasy, wavy hair, and a massive shaggy beard. So anyway, he comes down with the knife to take me out and I do the only thing I can think of: I shout 'Not today!' and throw my pillow at him, knocking him backwards. That gives me time to grab my wand, and I point it at him, and I say – I say 'One step closer, Black, and it'll be the last thing you ever feel'. He looks at the knife in his hand, then at my wand, and he runs off! Guess I was just too much of a warrior for him to handle."

Ron's invocation of the exact phrase he used _before_ made Hermione's skin crawl. She had to get out of there, away from Ron, away from _everything_. Maybe she could get Harry away for a bit, see if maybe he'd come back too, or at least try and develop some sort of relationship? No. Not now. None of that mattered. She felt like her world was crashing around her; too many memories of things that only she would remember, wizards and witches that had died in her past-future, by her hand or another's.

Hermione's heart beat faster as the crowd seemed to push in toward her. Even Ron's animated gesturing appeared closer and closer, his hands and elbows just brushing her face, her hair, her clothing. Her mind reeled as conscious thought left her and an instinct honed over a decade of war rose to the fore.

She stood abruptly, knocking Ron slightly off balance. "Hey!" he protested, reaching out and grabbing her arm to prevent being knocked out of the chair. "Don't go yet! I didn't get the best part!"

The 'best part' would have to wait. Hermione, perceiving Ron's grasp as an attack, quickly determined that he was too close for a wand. She needed separation, and fast.

 _CRUNCH!_ Hermione's fist shot forward and slammed into Ron's protruding nose, knocking the undeserving ginger backwards over the chair armrest and onto the floor.

"My dose!" Ron cried from the floor, blood dripping from both nostrils. "Why'd d'ou do dat?"

The throng of Gryffindors stepped back at the uncharacteristic aggression from the third year witch, then took another as she brandished her wand, her eyes cold and lips drawn to a thin line. Hermione jabbed her wand down at her feet and a yellow fog rolled outward from the tip of her wand, cold, clammy, and completely opaque. She let the fog envelope her completely, then tapped her wand on the top of her head and vanished from sight.

The assembled students began to panic as the fog rolled towards them, clambering over each other in their haste to flee the clearly possessed witch. More than a few stumbled in their haste, knocked awry by some unseen force moving quickly toward the portrait hole.

"Granger!"

Percy Weasley had re-entered the Common Rom at the very moment Hermione had put Ron on the floor and been stunned like the rest at the brunette's actions. The yellow fog and panicking Gryffindors spurned him to action; he was Head Boy after all.

"Granger! What in Merlin's name are you doing!" he shouted, striding toward the billowing cloud surrounding Hermione's last seen position, drawing his wand to hopefully banish the unknown vapor. Waving his wand about, he managed to vanish a small cube of the haze, only to have it immediately refilled by its neighboring murk.

"She hid me in my dose!" Ron whimpered from somewhere in the fog. "I dink its broken."

"10 points from Gryffindor!" Percy said firmly, puffing his chest out slightly. "Get rid of this fog and I won't take anymore. Ron needs to see Madame Pomfrey."

Still Disillusioned, Hermione only saw another attacker coming at her, wand drawn, and took no chances, defending herself by firing an olive green bolt of magic through the fog at the obscured form. Her aim was true, and the Battering Hex struck the Head Boy between his legs, dropping the seventh year to the ground.

Percy curled into a tight ball, pain radiating through his body.

"10 points from Gryffindor," he squeaked.

* * *

Harry wasn't sure exactly _what_ had just happened.

Seeing Ron surrounded by curious students, regaling them with a quite embellished tale of the Great Drapery Massacre of 1994, caused an ugly fire to burn deep within his core.

 _It definitely isn't because Hermione's sitting there with him; hips touching, lips parted slightly as she listens intently to the story, eyes only for the teller._

If his Imaginary-Hermione could roll her eyes, she would have. _Denial's not just a river in Africa, Harry,_ she taunted.

Harry felt his cheeks flush, thankful for the small bit of anonymity Ron had unwittingly permitted. Still, his eyes never left Hermione's face as Ron continued his tale, concern growing for the brunette as he noticed the witch slowly withdraw into herself, panic building in her eyes. He lurched forward into the crowd, pushing through the mass of students toward his target.

He'd only just breached the edge of the circle when Hermione snapped.

Harry could only watch in horror as his friend, his _best_ friend, laid out his _other_ best friend with a single punch, then conjure billowing sickly yellow fog around her. Their eyes met as she tapped the top of her head with her wand, shooting a look of apology laced with … affection? pity? Harry wasn't sure. Before he could ponder it further, Hermione shimmered and vanished from sight, leaving him alone in the murk with a moaning Ron somewhere nearby.

 _Um, what?_

Harry's brain attempted to connect the now invisible witch with an ability that only someone as powerful as Gellert Grindlewald should have, at least according to the Headmaster.

 _So,_ Harry pondered, staring blankly into the empty space where Hermione had previously been standing, _does that mean that Hermione is, what, super powerful or something? Or Dumbledore lied? Or Hermione's dad is Grindlewald? Hermione IS Grindlewald?_

Harry shook his head slightly to clear his thoughts. _I'm just confusing myself. Hermione would be able to straighten all this out. She's probably around here somewh—_

 _Oh._

 _Right._

Ron moaned again from somewhere in front of Harry, snapping him out of his circling thoughts and driving him to action.

 _Ron first, then brain. Got it._

Harry crouched down on hands and knees and crawled toward the chair, searching the floor for the prone, injured Weasley. He could find Hermione later, hopefully. He was fairly certain she had broken at least one knuckle in the strike, probably two at minimum and perhaps a finger as well. She'd need to see Madame Pomfrey at some point, if only for a bit of Skele-Gro to quickly heal the damage. Dudley had done the same a few years ago; he'd taken a full month to heal, although Harry suspected he milked the recovery time a bit at the end.

 _Better to get it healed overnight than suffer through bandaged and braced hands_ , Harry mused and chuckled mirthlessly to himself at the thought.

Apparently the Dursleys were good for something after all.

Harry quickly found Ron just to the side of the chair, still clutching his bleeding and clearly broken nose.

"Come on, Ron," he said, shaking the redhead gently on the shoulder. "Let's get you to the Hospital Wing. Madame Pomfrey will fix you right up."

"Dose hurts. Can'd see," Ron complained from the floor.

 _Sometimes, Ron, you can be the biggest baby._ "Here, I'll help you up."

Harry grabbed Ron's arm and stood, pulling the ginger wizard up with him. "We'll go slow until this haze dissipates. I'll lead."

They'd only managed a handful of steps before the curled and groaning form of Percy Weasley coalesced in front of them.

"Perce?" Ron said hesitantly. "Wha' happened do you?"

"Granger," Percy wheezed. "Bollocks. Fine. Go. Pomfrey."

"Uh, you sure, Percy? We can wait a bit if you need it," Harry said, concerned.

Percy rolled onto his knees and placed his forehead on the floor between his elbows. "Be fine. Go ahead. Without me," he managed. "Thanks anyway, though."

Harry gave a sympathetic grimace in response and pulled Ron through the fading smog toward the tower entrance, managing to only stumble into a handful of varying furniture before stepping through the portrait hole and into the hall.

Directly into absolute chaos.

The Hogwarts Rumor Pipeline had been running at peak efficiency all morning as the tale of Ron's now-miraculous survival of The Black Attack spread through the castle like wildfire. As a result, a majority of Hufflepuff and nearly all of Ravenclaw had amassed outside the newly-christened Tower of Terror for a chance to glimpse the Weasley-Who-Weathered emerging from the entrance. There were even a few green and silver ties sporadically intermixed with the tide of bronze/cobalt and canary/ebony, although when confronted they all claimed either morbid curiosity or attendance through "lost wanderings".

On the other side of the Fat Lady's portrait, Ron's tale had enraptured the vast majority of Gryffindor, most at least curious to the cause of the before-daybreak interruptions. The tightly packed audience, fearful of the mass-murderer Sirius Black, spellbound by Ron's telling, and witness to an Auror-level charm from a diminutive third-year witch, bravely chose life and fled the billowing yellow cloud toward the safest location they could think of in that miniscule of moments: the Hogwarts corridors.

The impatient crowd outside Gryffindor Tower surged forward as the portrait opened, hoping for a glimpse of the Stabbing Survivor, and were met in force by a wave of fleeing scarlet-and-gold trimmed students. Bodies impacted and tumbled together, robes wrapping, tripping, and twisting students of all ages to the floor as the two moving masses impacted. Hermione's overpowered Obscuring Charm followed quickly, flowing eerily through the portrait hole and enveloping the pupil pile in its sickly, sulfur-tinted haze.

It was to this turmoil that Harry and Ron found themselves presented. The haze had begun to weaken as it filled Hogwarts proper, giving the two third years enough visibility to pick their way through the struggling throng of students littering the corridor. They had just managed to clear the last few obstacles when a voice stopped them both in their tracks, its severe-faced owner appearing around a corner in front of the pair, flanked by a short-statured wizard and a squat, frumpy witch, a tall, black-and-greasy-haired wizard casually trailing behind.

The Heads of House had arrived.

"Misters Potter. Weasley," the unmistakable voice of Professor Minerva McGonagall pierced the din of bruised and bound students behind them. "What in Merlin's name is going on here?"

Harry opened his mouth to respond as the three other Professors strode past and began extracting students from the pile, then slammed it shut as Ron jumped in to explain.

"Id was 'ermione, Professor," Ron whinged, still holding his nose. "She brode my dose, then made some cloud. I 'unno afder dat," he shrugged, unwilling to mention that he'd spent most of the time after the hit rolling on the floor.

"I see," Minerva stated dryly, a raising a single eyebrow in inquiry. "Mr. Potter, anything else to add?"

Harry wasn't so willing to throw Hermione under the bus. She always had a good reason for doing what she did, even if he didn't always understand or agree with them at the time. He shook his head in denial.

"No, Professor," Harry lied, "I wasn't close enough to see much, and the cloud blocked everything else."

"I see," Minerva said again. "Very well, I'll have to ask Miss Granger herself. Mister Caldwell," she addressed a brown-haired fifth-year Prefect recently pulled from the pile. "Please inform Miss Hermione Granger that she has detention with me tonight. Any of the third-year schedules will do. Thank you."

She turned her attention back to the two third-years in front of her briefly. "You'd best get Mister Weasley to the Infirmary. I suspect there will be quite a queue this morning. I'll see you both in class this afternoon."

Minerva didn't wait for a response as she strode past the pair and began assisting in clearing the significant jumble of tangled students, leaving Harry and Ron to look at each other in confusion.

"Uh, did she jusd say 'any schedule' for 'ermione?" Ron began thoughtfully. "Aren'd dere, like, den differend ones?"

"I don't know, Ron," Harry countered. "Hermione's been acting strange all year. We'll have to ask her when we see her next. Come on, at least Madame Pomfrey can get you pronouncing 't's again properly. There's no saving that giant beak you call a nose."

Ron smiled and smacked Harry on the shoulder. "Dosser," he retorted.

Harry smirked. "It's 'tosser,' with a 't'. You'll get it right one day."

* * *

Despite Marietta's best efforts, or perhaps in spite of them, Luna's day continued to improve. She'd paid the Kitchens a visit earlier that morning and been served a surprisingly wonderful cantaloupe and strawberry omelet from an eccentric house elf named Dobby, a kind and hardworking creature who seemed just a bit obsessed with Harry Potter. Not that Luna minded, of course; she could certainly understand how someone could be obsessed with a wizard such as Harry.

Her best friend Ginevra was one such witch. Luna had spent hours upon hours, 537 to be exact, patiently listening as the poor redhead would whinge about how Her Perfect Harry Potter wouldn't even give her the time of day, then about how they'd get married and have eight perfect children, four boys and four girls, and they'd be the Couple of the Millennium, then back to how Harry wasn't interested in her because she was just Ron's Little Sister and who could ever fall in love with that? And people called _her_ crazy!

Luna wasn't one to be obsessed over a boy though. Other witches, maybe, but not Luna Medea Lovegood. She certainly didn't know that Harry only drooled out of the right side of his mouth when he slept, nor that when he wrote his name, the second 'r' was both larger than the first and connected into the 'y'. She definitely wouldn't suspect that Harry always started walking with his left foot, even though he was right-handed, and couldn't possibly be aware that he'd worn his underpants inside out one day in first year because he didn't know how to get laundry to the house elves. And she _absolutely_ didn't have a framed picture of him clutching the snitch after the Gryffindor-Slytherin match at the beginning of her first year that she'd bribed Colin Creevey for with three chocolate frogs, two sugar quills, and a Guaranteed O-grade Charms assignment.

And if she did know those things, well, her father did run a magazine after all. She was just practicing good journalism.

Luna's morning exploration took her far into the upper reaches of the castle, skipping lightly down the left corridor of the seventh floor and away from Gryffindor Tower. She'd already reached the end of the hallway and began retracing her steps, back toward the Grand Staircase. Just ahead and around the next corner hung a favorite painting of hers: _Barnabus the Barmy and his Dancing Trolls_. Luna, on more than one occasion, had attempted to help the unfortunate portrait teach the octet of trolls a simple plié, only to have the instructor launched via Club-Air into a nearby frame. Perhaps she'd have better luck today; it was a good morning after all.

A female voice greeted Luna as she approached the turn in the hallway, one that the young witch would recognize almost anywhere. Eyes wide and brows shooting into her hairline, Luna plastered herself against the wall and peeked around the corner.

Her ears hadn't deceived her; Hermione Granger, Gryffindor Darling, Muggle _First_ born Phenom, and Brightest Witch of Her Age, strode forcefully up and down the corridor muttering angrily to herself.

"Stupid," the bushy-haired witch berated to no one in particular. "Stupid, stupid, stupid. What the fuck were you thinking, Hermione? An Obscuring Charm? Really? People are going to start calling you the Second Coming of Morgana herself. Or Medea even. Or Circe! Fuck!

Luna's jaw dropped. She knew about that charm from her father's work; one of the many in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement Spellbook that had fallen out of use due simply to a lack of ability among the Aurors themselves. A third-year witch casting such a spell was unheard of, even if the witch in question was _Hermione Granger_. Luna's brain didn't have time to parse the rest of the information as the bombshells continued to drop.

"And you just _had_ to go and hit Ron. Ron! You couldn't let that go, even if it's not going to happen this time around," Hermione continued frustratingly, completely unaware of the blonde eavesdropper's presence. "Argh! Open up! You know what I need!"

Hermione paced back and forth a few more times before stopping and facing the wall, her back to the hallway painting.

"Finally. _Thank you_ ," she said sarcastically, before opening the newly materialized door and striding through, roughly closing it behind her.

Luna stumbled around the corner and down the hall toward the impossible doorway and the now vanished witch, her mind working overtime. Realizing her mouth was still agape, she slowly pushed it closed as she closely inspected the simple wooden door embedded in the otherwise normal stone wall. Luna knew this corridor fairly well, and there had never been a door here before. How did Hermione know about it, and more interestingly, how did she get it to appear?

Hesitantly, Luna raised her hand to knock on the door.

 _What do I say if she answers, though? 'Hi, I was just listening to everything you just said, but you didn't see me because I was hiding, and I just wanted to see if you wanted to talk about anything?' Real smart, Luna. You're already Looney Lovegood to most of the school, and with that kind of line you'll get a brand new nickname in Gryffindor: "The Stalker"._

Luna lowered her hand and slowly sat, turning to lean back against the rough oak wood of the door.

 _It's not like she has time for a little second-year Ravenclaw,_ she thought sadly. _You're not friend material anyway, especially not for someone as amazing as Hermione Granger. You're not even friend material for your actual friends; all Ginny wants to talk about is the Boy-Who-Lived, and she only comes to you because no one else will listen to her gush._

 _But that doesn't matter,_ Luna forcefully retorted. _This might be the only chance you get to talk to her. If Daddy can go on expeditions to search for creatures no one's ever seen, you can talk to your hero._

Roughly wiping her damp eyes, Luna stood confidently. _Okay, Luna. Turn and knock. You can do this._

The Ravenclaw spun, raising a closed hand to rap on the doorway, and was met with a solid, seamless, and grey stone wall. The portal, along with any opportunity she hoped to gain, had vanished.

Luna's confidence fled as quickly as it had arrived and her arm dropped to her side in defeat. Giving the blank wall a look of pure sadness, she turned and trudged away, down the Grand Staircase and toward a resurgent reality and her first class of the day, unsure of what additional disappointments lay before her.

She wasn't sure the morning could be classified as 'good' anymore either.

* * *

Striding through the door, Hermione grabbed the handle and pulled it behind her, backing up against the smooth maple and firmly closing the door with her body. Leaning her head back against the cool wood, she took a deep breath and let the frustration and adrenaline of the morning slowly melt away.

"Thank Merlin for the Room of Requirement _,_ "she whispered gratefully to the empty room.

At least she'd managed to get here without being seen. Her disillusionment had faded just past the Grand Staircase at roughly the same time she'd managed to regain control over her own actions, thankfully away from prying eyes and ears. Every portrait she'd passed had been either empty or asleep, likely flocking toward the turmoil outside Gryffindor Tower, and what a disaster _that_ was.

She'd even cast _Homenum Revelio_ when she'd entered the left corridor to be absolutely certain there was no one nearby. She'd made some tweaks to the Arithmancy behind the spell a few years back and removed the 'swooping' feeling that accompanied detection. In its place, she been forced to add an immunity to certain targets, but only if the caster felt pure emotion towards them. It wasn't perfect, but in all her testing she'd only found Harry and Luna to be invisible to the spell; Love was apparently the only pure emotion it recognized. Either that or she'd not tested it on anyone she hated enough yet.

Regardless, Harry was on the other side of the Quad in the Gryffindor Common Room and Luna was either down in the Great Hall for breakfast or far away in the Ravenclaw Tower; even if the spell could ignore them, there was practically zero chance either of them were near enough to spot her entering the Room.

Hermione was _definitely_ alone.

The bushy-haired witch slid slowly down the smooth wood to the floor, back still pressed firmly against door, and placed her head between her knees.

 _So much for 'keeping your mind straight,' Hermione. How are you going to get yourself out of this one?_

She gently took a small hourglass set deftly inside a pair of interwoven rings out from under her uniform and peered intently at it, careful not to spin it lest she unintentionally fling herself backward in time. Again.

"With all the use you got this year," she said to the artifact, "you'd think I'd have a handle on this whole time-travel thing. I've only been back a handful of hours and completely screwed everything up. And poor Harry," she continued with a deep sigh, "the last time I saw that look from him was right after Bellatrix cursed me at Grimmauld Place. I guess I should feel good that this Harry seems to share my Harry's affection, but I don't know if I'll be able to keep from comparing the two."

Hermione tucked the Time-Turner back under her blouse and closed her eyes, laying her head up against the door once more. "How am I supposed to keep one person I've only known for two-and-a-half years straight with one I knew for more than seventeen? Not to mention I don't know _anything_ about Luna."

Hermione's eyes slowly opened and she raised an eyebrow at the ceiling above.

"Luna," she said again thoughtfully, nodding slowly to herself. "Luna could help. It'll be like making a new friend. She never spoke about her time at Hogwarts, but it couldn't have been good. Alright, Hermione, maybe you haven't screwed _everything_ up yet. Get this plan underway and track down Luna; Harry will come around eventually."

Her mood considerably improved, Hermione stood and fished the quill and parchment from her robes, eyeing the fireside chair in front of her.

"Oh!" she squeaked before she could step toward seat, smacking herself lightly on the forehead. "Stupid girl. Get rid of the door first. _Merlin,_ Hermione, you're acting like a lovesick teenager all over again. Best nip that in the bud right quick."

Willing the door away, Hermione stepped to the chair, settled in comfortably, and began to write.

The hours passed quickly as the time-traveling witch worked diligently on her end-of-term and summer plans. McNair, Pettigrew, Crouch Jr would all see their last sunrise before the start of the next school year, with more to follow the following year. Hermione had left plenty of room in her schedule for more than just those three Death Eaters to meet their ends, but simply didn't have enough information on their whereabouts at the time. If she happened upon a few choice characters though, who would notice if a pureblood elder went missing now and again? Besides, the worst ones were still in Azkaban, and without Voldemort returning they should have no problem staying put.

She'd just finished inking the last table when her stomach growled irritatingly, a reminder she hadn't eaten since she woke this morning.

 _Probably should eat something before I head back. I_ really _don't want to deal with the gossip in the Great Hall over breakfast._

Concentrating, she willed the Room to provide a breakfast of oat porridge laced with blueberries and a glass of orange juice; small, certainly, but she'd have time to eat lunch during the normal period.

Hermione frowned as an ornate mahogany end table appeared next to her, an empty porcelain bowl and a crystal goblet filled with an orange-yellow citrus liquid atop it.

 _Did the Room not do food?_ she thought, confused. She focused again, detailing the porridge as much as she could; how the oats puffed slightly and melded together, the berries staining the immediate area around them a dark purple. Still, the Room of Requirement refused to oblige.

 _Well, that's unfortunate,_ Hermione huffed silently. _I'll just have to traipse down to the Kitchens and grab a bite before my first class. It'll just take one more turn than I originally planned._

Hermione quickly downed her juice and willed the exit back into existence, stepping lightly through the doorway and into the abandoned corridor. She strode quickly further down the hall, slipping into a dusty, unused classroom she recalled from years ago and took out her Time-Turner. Shaking her head again in disbelief that the magical world would entrust a thirteen-year-old girl, and a _muggleborn_ no less, with a time machine, Hermione spun the hourglass a full five times and braced for the inevitable reverse.

Nothing happened.

Curious and a bit concerned, Hermione ran down what she remembered from the checklist. Yes, the chain was around her neck. Yes, she was in a place where she wouldn't see her past self. Yes, the place she was in existed in the time she was attempting to go back. Something about a five-hour maximum? She shrugged. Maybe four turns would do it. She might be a bit late to Muggle Studies and Arithmancy, but she could weather one disciplinary action in those classes, especially if she did as well as she did last time around. As long as she wasn't late to Transfiguration, she'd be fine.

Certain she was following the proper procedure this time, Hermione spun the hourglass only four times and again braced for the time-reverse. Nothing.

The Time-Turner wasn't working.

That wasn't the worst part, either. All her carefully crafted plans required a working Time-Turner. How was she going to free Sirius from custody without throwing suspicion on to Harry or Remus? Or save Buckbeak from Macnair's axe? Not to mention her coursework. People were _definitely_ going to suspect something was wrong now. She could hear the rumors already; 'Hermione Granger's definitely gone mad. She attacked a pureblood and then started skipping classes!', 'She's just a crazy muggleborn. I knew she couldn't keep up with us _real_ witches.' She was supposed to be flying _under_ the radar, not dancing naked in front of the Wizengamot!

"AARRGGHH!" she screamed, yanking the Time Turner from her neck and throwing it against the far wall of the room in frustration where it bounced and clattered along the floor. "This is YOUR FAULT, Lilith! Send me back without my family, then remove the _one tool_ I need to pull this off; I'm done. DONE. I'm grabbing Harry and Luna the first chance I get and we're headed to Australia, prophecies or deals be damned. We might not have been perfect, but we were _happy,_ and you _took that away from me_."

Hermione glowered at the fallen Time Turner. Determined, she shouted her final thoughts to the Queen of the Fey.

"FUCK. YOU."

Snatching the offending artifact from the dusty floor, she shoved it into a pocket in her robes and stormed out of the room and down the hall toward the Transfiguration classroom. She'd just have to do this the old-fashioned way.

Alone.

Joy.

* * *

 **A/N:** There we go! Chapter 6 is a continuation of the day, which is why I've released it simultaneously. Thanks for reading!


	6. Chapter 6: Hogwarts, We Have A Problem

**A/N:** ***IMPORTANT***

I've completely rewritten Chapter 5. The previously posted chapter has been significantly lengthened to the point of filling two chapters, rather than a single one. For readers who began this story before April 8th, 2017, please make sure you go back and re-read Chapter 5 before progressing to Chapter 6; there's quite a bit more there now.

 **Spells:**

Rite of Cleansing: Powerful ritual. Used to self-purify magical cores. WARNING: Highly addictive.

 **Disclaimer:** I'm thankful for the opportunity to play around in the sandbox that is the Harry Potter Universe. Apologies to those authors whose ideas I have unintentionally incorporated.

Please enjoy the sixth installment of **Of Fae and Fervor!**

* * *

 **Chapter 6 – Hogwarts, We Have A Problem**

Seated in their usual desk near the front of the Transfiguration Classroom, Ron and Harry exchanged glances as the empty chair in front of them remained so long after the start of class. With the odd number of students in the joint Ravenclaw/Gryffindor course, Hermione had managed to grab a desk to herself where she preferred to sit: dead center and as far forward as possible, her raised hand an almost constant presence in Harry's vision during lecture. Its, and her, absence made Harry feel uncomfortable. Something had happened to Hermione, of that Harry was certain; he just had to figure out what it was.

He'd been through this before. Last year, when she'd been petrified by the Basilisk, he'd only just managed to keep it all together, but at least he knew where she was and could visit her regularly. He'd even improved his note-taking during class so he'd have something to talk to her about when he visited the infirmary. He didn't know if it helped; Madame Pomfrey maintained that Petrifaction removed the ability to see and hear and Hermione never said anything after she recovered, but he felt better at least doing _something_.

Professor McGonagall's passing address broke him from his musing.

"Best try that again, Mister Potter," she mentioned dryly, striding past his desk to assist some poor student in the rear of the class. Neville, if the familiar panicked shout was anything to go by.

Harry brought his transfiguration attempt back into focus. They were supposed to be turning a chocolate rabbit into a crystal goblet, but Harry had absently formed his into a rather feminine shape. He peered closely at the glasswork; the shapely hips, slight bust, and mane of hair looked familiar. Eyes widening in recognition, Harry flushed and quickly slipped the crystal figurine of a _very_ naked Hermione Granger into his bookbag and out of sight, hoping his unintended creation hadn't been noticed by any of his classmates. Especially Ron.

 _Oh, Merlin,_ he thought, glancing to his left at the fellow Gryffindor.

Thankfully, Ron was completely absorbed by the chocolate-eared glass cup in front of him, tongue clamped between his teeth in concentration. Content that he'd at least get an 'Acceptable' for the day, Ron leaned back against the chair and absently nibbled on the half-transfigured object.

"So, what do you think is up with Hermione?" He said, lips stained with chocolate. He set the now-earless cup down and grabbed another of his eared failures, motioning to the empty seat in front of them before shoving the unglassed chocolate in his mouth.

Harry looked around. The Professor in question was inspecting Neville Longbottom's valiant attempt at a crystal chalice. It was close; if you squinted, closed one eye, spun in place four times and forgot that crystal was supposed to be colorless and transparent, not bright green and milky.

And on fire.

Confident McGonagall was otherwise distracted, Harry felt it safe to respond.

"I dunno," he whispered. "She's been stressed all year, but seemed fine this morning. Excited, really; right up until she hit you. You spoke to her more than I did today anyway. Maybe she just wanted to hear about the encounter from the horse's mouth?"

Ron coughed in embarrassment. "I may not have given her a chance to say much this morning," he said sheepishly. "And anyway, what does a horse have to do with anything? Listen, Harry. I overheard Susan Bones talking about that spell Hermione cast; her Mum's head of the DMLE, yeah? And she said that spell, the Obfuscation Charm or something, was so difficult the Ministry had to remove it from the Auror requirements, but Hermione did it and she's just a third year, and a muggleborn!"

Harry furrowed his brows at Ron's casual classism and opened his mouth to retort before being interrupted by a call from across the room.

"Mister Weasley," Minerva addressed the unfortunate Gryffindor. "Anything you'd like to share with the rest of the class? Perhaps you'd could scribe Gamp's five Exceptions on the board, since you appear finished with your chalice," the professor said, affixing Ron with a stern glare.

"Um, uh, n – no, ma'am, uh, Professor," Ron stammered, back straight and head facing forward away from the instructor.

Unseen by the terrified ginger, Minerva allowed the faintest of smiles to grace her stern visage; she'd get the poor boy to learn if she had to spoon-feed it through his ear. She'd just have to do it _after_ figuring out how Longbottom had managed to turn his notebook into a slab of corned beef, a clear violation of today's entire lecture on Gamp's Laws of Elemental Transfiguration. "It wasn't a request, Mister Weasley. Mister Potter, you may join him: at least two each … and no notes or textbooks."

Harry and Ron groaned audibly to sniggers from the nearby Ravenclaws and drug themselves out of their seats and up to the front of the classroom.

"Where's Hermione when we need her?" Ron complained quietly as they stood in front of the blank chalkboard. Harry shrugged, unwilling to reveal just how much he relied on the brilliant witch as well. Grabbing a piece of white chalk, he scratched out 'Gamps exceptions' at the top and the numbers one through five in a column down one side. At least he'd put _something_ down.

 _Okay, Exceptions to Gamp's Laws of … something._ Harry shook his head. Hermione would know this in an instant. Where was she, anyway?

In response, the classroom door burst open and smashed against the wall. Ron shrieked and jumped, snapping the chalk in his hand, shattered pieces of limestone clattering on the floor. There, in the threshold, stood Hermione Granger herself, hair tousled and uniform askew, as if she'd just finished a run through the castle.

"Sorry," she said meekly, her earlier anger fleeing as she blushed brilliantly, her unintended entrance causing seventeen pairs of eyes to snap to her, more than a few jaws agape, "the door opened easier than I remembered."

Professor McGonagall was unruffled. "Miss Granger," she began.

Hermione winced. She did _not_ want to be on Minerva's bad side, and she was burning bridges faster than the Soviets during World War II. Who knew being fourteen again would be so difficult? There was no way she made it out of here without losing more points, and possibly even detention. Maybe that would be alright though, she could just blame it on overwork, maybe?

Minerva continued unabated. "While I appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule to join us in class, perhaps the next time you are tardy you could be a bit less dramatic? Did Mister Caldwell speak with you yet?"

"Who? About what?" Hermione said, confused. She didn't know a Caldwell, did she?

"Don't play coy with me, Miss Granger. I am certainly _not_ in the mood," Minerva said shortly. Perhaps she needed to re-evaluate her opinion of the muggleborn witch; if she was unable to recall one of the fifth-year prefects, she likely was struggling to keep up in her classes as well. There might be some truth to the stack of complaints from Professors Trelawney and Burbage after all.

"Regardless, your tardiness begets a five point deduction from Gryffindor," she continued, gaze indicating a space behind the younger witch. "Take your seat; quickly now, and see me after class."

Hermione followed Professor McGonagall's eyes to the indicated desk, tucked into a shadowy corner of the classroom and blanched, color vanishing from her face as quickly as it had arrived. She had never, not a single time, been forced to sit in the horrendous cantaloupe-colored desk; never been associated with the large formal 'D' carved deeply into the front panel. Swallowing thickly, she trudged to the desk amidst the tittering of her classmates and sat, feeling the weight of the materialized white cone resting on her crown more on her psyche than any physical presence.

From the front of the classroom Harry watched open mouthed as his best friend plodded to the Desk, turning away before she sat; that was one image he refused to let enter his mind. He'd had to sit there once or twice in second year, and he swore Ron had spent half of first year as a cone-head, but his Hermione would _never_ be seen there, and _certainly_ not go so willingly.

Harry's breath caught, eyes staring unseeing at the chalkboard. _Ginny was acting odd last year and no one noticed or did anything until it was almost too late._ _If Riddle made one Diary, what would keep him from making another? She could be possessed, and no one would ever think to look for_ two _Voldemort artifacts. I have to get into the girls dorm, somehow. Ginny hid the Diary in her trunk for safekeeping, maybe 'Mione is doing the same?_

 _I'll have to talk to Ron about getting Ginny to help, and probably need another Fang too._ _At least I won't have to fight another Basilisk this time,_ he shivered. _Hopefully._

 _Don't worry, Hermione. I'll save you._

"Harry," Ron hissed, his insistence barely penetrating Harry's mental haze. "Let's go, before McGonagall realizes we don't know what Grawp's Exemptions are," he finished, pulling firmly on Harry's robe.

Still struggling with the implications of a possessed Hermione Granger, Harry allowed himself to be led back to his desk, just managing to land his seat in his chair, a large portion of his mind remaining focused on the bushy-haired girl.

Mercifully, for Ron and Harry at least, the young witch's disruption caused Professor McGonagall to forget about her earlier assignment to the two wizards and Ron's gambit paid off in spades. In their place, the professor instead called up a pair of Ravenclaws, Sue Li and Mandy Brocklehurst, who smirked knowingly at the two boys before quickly putting the five Exceptions to chalk, gaining a pair of points apiece for their effort.

Show offs.

For Hermione, it was the worst 30 minutes of her life. The Desk's built-in silencing charm meant she could only respond to a direct question from the professor and she had been so engrossed in planning out how three teenagers could escape to Australia, _without_ raising too many eyebrows mind you, that she completely missed Professor McGonagall's inquiry, earning her an automatic ten point deduction; yet another function of the much despised Desk.

Hermione kept her head down as class ended, waiting for the room to clear before she met with Professor McGonagall and unwilling to risk meeting Harry's eyes, even for a moment. She knew she was balancing her psyche on a razor's edge and seeing a look of concern, or worse, _pity_ , on Harry's face would push her over. It was taking almost all of her effort just to remain stable in public and the stress was taking its toll.

Hermione suppressed a yawn and sniffed slightly. Maybe she was just ill at this point in time, and forgot?

 _I'll have to deal with that later as well,_ she thought as she rose and trudged up to the front of the mostly empty classroom. _Ok, you're fourteen year-old girl. Better show some deference._

"Professor?" she tried, hoping that her attempt at meekness would be enough. "You wanted to see me?"

Professor McGonagall looked up from her papers and at the young witch in front of her. "I did, yes. I take it from our earlier discussion Mister Caldwell did not meet with you this morning?"

Hermione still couldn't remember any Caldwell, but after the earlier rebuke felt it unwise to push the issue. "No, Professor," she said simply.

The professor exhaled deeply. "Miss Granger," she began, "I must say, I am quite disappointed in your actions this morning. You've always been one of my star pupils, but I am beginning to think you've taken on too much this term. Half of Gryffindor is telling me that you cast a post-seventh year spell, a plainly ridiculous accusation, and the other half is quite adamant that you struck a fellow classmate, and Mister Weasley's nose seems to inclined agree. That was very unexpectedly muggle of you."

Hermione's temper flared at the casual use of the derogatory term. _Keep it together, Hermione,_ she told herself. _Pick your battles. Whatever you have to do. Don't. Screw. This. Up._ Clamping her tongue between her front teeth, Hermione barely managed to keep from interjecting.

"Regardless," Professor McGonagall continued, "your actions caused quite a spectacle, resulting in no less than 47 trips to the infirmary. As much as it pains me to do so, I am forced to take a minimum of one point for each injury. Mister Caldwell was supposed to inform you of your detention with me tonight, but according to these notes I received from Professors Hagrid, Trelawney, Babbling, Vector, and Burbage, you seem to have missed all your morning classes, which, and I shouldn't have to remind you of this, should be _impossible_ unless you specifically choose _not_ to attend them."

Fury rising, Hermione could taste copper now, but kept her jaw clenched through the reprimand. It wasn't her fault the morons stacked up against the portrait had fallen like dominoes! And if the stupid Time-Turner still worked, she wouldn't have missed her classes either!

"I will collect you from the Great Hall tonight, after dinner. Please attend your remaining classes to avoid any further automatic point deductions, if not for yourself, then at least for the sake of your House. You may go."

Eyes blazing, Hermione managed a terse "Yes, Professor" before spinning and storming out of the classroom. Australia was looking better by the hour.

* * *

When Harry and Ron arrived in the Great Hall that evening for dinner, Hermione was already seated alone at the far end of the Gryffindor table. She'd avoided them during both Care of Magical Creatures and History of Magic, fleeing the classes as soon as the bell rang and disappearing into the depths of the castle. Even the Marauder's Map couldn't seem to find her, much to Harry's chagrin.

She seemed furious when he last saw her, but she was clearly distraught now. Seeing her sitting there alone, Harry felt a pull he couldn't quite place and moved to sit next to her. Maybe he could ask her about her diary?

 _Smart, Harry. 'Hi, Hermione, you wouldn't mind if I rummaged through your personal belongings to look for a book with your deepest, darkest secrets, would you? Just in case it's a Dark Artifact that's possessing you. Thanks!'_

 _Harry – You're an idiot._

Ron grabbed an arm before he could find a seat and pulled him down to the bench near the middle of the table.

"You don't want to sit next to Granger, Harry," Ron said as Harry reluctantly sat too far away from his best friend. "Did you hear what people are saying? George said she lost more points today than he or Fred ever managed, and they've been after the record since they got here! I can't be seen next to her, not now, not when I'm the Guy Who Fought off Sirius Black!"

Ron threw his hands wide at his self-awarded title, knocking a young blonde Ravenclaw into her housemates and on to the floor. Most of the nearby students seemed to pointedly ignore the fallen second year, and any that may have been inclined found their attention otherwise engaged as a doe-eyed Lavender Brown, seated directly opposite the two wizards, prodded Ron's ego for a fifth time that day. Ron was only too happy to oblige and leapt back into his tail, instantly forgetting that he'd struck anything in his flailing, much less a person.

Rolling his eyes at his overeager and easily-distracted friend, Harry turned to help the fallen witch up and found himself gazing into a pair of bright silver orbs. He felt his chest tighten as he stared deeply into the eyes below him, their irises so pure in color they put newly minted sickles to shame. Two obsidian pupils began to dilate, as if taking a breath to rebut his impropriety.

"Hello, Harry Potter," they seemed to say, dreamily. Harry released a breath he didn't know he had been holding and shook his head in an attempt to clear the gathered cobwebs, grasping the girl's right hand in his own and pulling her to her feet.

"I'm – I'm Harry Potter," he stammered to the eyes.

"I know," a pair of coral lips beneath the eyes said, a small giggle flowing musically from between them. "That's what I said."

"Oh."

"I'm going to go sit with my house now. Thank you for helping me up, Harry Potter."

"What? Oh, right, yeah. It was nothing."

Harry stared at witch before him, taking in every detail. How her wavy blonde hair perfectly framed her fair-skinned face. How her silver eyes glinted with knowledge and a bit of hidden mirth, the dark circles beneath her lids only partially obscured, betraying a worry that went beyond the normal issues of classwork and schoolyard drama. How her coral lips beckoned to his, glistening from the moisture of a timid salmon tongue. How –

"Harry,"

"What? Yes?"

"Would you mind releasing my hand? I'd like to eat dinner now, please."

Harry released the blonde witch's hand as if it burned as hot as his cheeks felt. Those perfect lips smiled again at him before turning and sauntering away with the rest of her, slipping between the assembled Houses to an opening down at the far end of the table, leaving a melodious "Goodbye, Harry Potter" in her place.

Was the Great Hall always so warm in April? Harry shrugged off his cloak and tucked it beneath him, loosening his tie and pulling roughly on his collar in an attempt to resist the rising temperature.

 _Hopefully dinner will start soon. I could really use a glass of water,_ he thought, sitting back down next to the bloviating ginger wizard.

Ron, having finished retelling his evolving tale to a continually and amazingly enraptured audience, filled his plate to overflowing as food appeared up and down the table.

"You gonna eat anything?" he asked, small bits of food fleeing the ravenous maw.

Harry could only focus on the witch he'd just met, the ache in his chest refusing to lessen. He'd only had that happen one other time that he could recall, and that was back when he'd first ridden on the Hogwarts Express and –

"Who was that?" he blurted to distract himself from dangerous thoughts.

"Who was what?" Ron looked around wildly, the terror that Black had returned to finish the job creeping into his eyes.

"Ravenclaw table, down at the end."

Ron's head snapped around in response before sighing audibly. "Merlin, Harry! Give a bloke a heart attack!" he said, clutching his chest in mock relief. "You mean the airy blonde down there that no one's sitting next to, right? That's Looney Lovegood. Mad as a bag of ferrets, that one. Her dad, too."

Harry raised an eyebrow in inquiry, but was forced to verbalize his encouragement for Ron to continue as the ginger took his silence as an opening to fill his mouth with yet more food.

"You know her, then?" Harry prompted.

"Not really," Ron waved a chicken leg in dismissal. "Ginny's known her for ages. Their house is near the Burrow, if you can even call it that. More like a tower, really."

"But isn't the Burrow a tow—"

"Like I said, the whole family's nutso. Mister Lovegood's got a magazine, the Quibbler, dunno if you've read it, full of all sorts of crazy animals that don't exist. And that's saying something, we've got loads more animals that muggles think don't exist. They're all barmy, if you ask me."

"The animals?" Harry inquired, attempting to parse even a bit of Ron's ill-described rant.

"What? Come on, Harry. Muggles! They're all barmy! I mean, some of them claim there's a sea monster in a lake in Scotland that no one's ever seen, yet they're absolutely certain that magic doesn't exist. Barmy, I tell you!"

"Right, because the giant squid in the Black Lake doesn't look _anything_ like Nessie," Harry grumbled under his breath. Why was he friends with Ron again?

Any attempt to address such a philosophic question would have to wait. Ron had quickly managed to find someone nearby who apparently hadn't heard the events of that morning – _hadn't Ron just_ _finished telling Lavender the story? –_ and Harry's mind had more important things to ponder. He finished dinner with an unconscious smile, thoughts of chocolate and silver eyes dancing through his mind.

* * *

Alone and down at the far end of the table, Hermione sniffed and smiled sadly as she played Harry and Luna's new first-introduction slowly through her mind, repeating the memory over and over as she pushed a small amount of food around her plate. Harry was clearly enamored with the pretty blond witch, and Hermione simply hoped that there was room for her in this timeline as well.

 _As long as they're happy, I'll be fine,_ she unconvincingly told herself.

She had more important things to deal with than pursuing any young romance or relationship; little things like recovering from her earlier blunders, maintaining excellent student credentials as cover for her time-travel, and saving all of Magical Britain from itself.

Just another day in the life of Hermione Granger.

Hermione yawned and shivered slightly, pulling her cloak tighter around her shoulders.

 _Was it always this cold in April?_ she thought. _If this keeps up, I'll have to start wearing my scarf to meals_.

Hermione glanced down the table toward the rest of her year. Harry seemed lost in thought as Ron regaled the nearby Gryffindors again and again, somehow managing to eat, drink, and breathe while maintaining a constant dialogue. Hermione might have even been impressed if it wasn't so incredibly off-putting she had to look away.

It was probably a good thing she wasn't very hungry tonight, anyway.

The Great Hall was mostly empty when Professor McGonagall finally collected her from dinner, leading the young witch out of the Hall and into her office. The stern-faced witch sat deftly behind a formidable mahogany desk, a rack of fuchsia and lapis scroll cases to her right, and instructed Hermione to stand at the front, an assuredly disciplinarian position Hermione once again had no recollection of.

"Now, Miss Granger," Minerva said firmly, her tone boding ill for the time-travelling witch, "would you like to explain why you chose to miss _four_ classes this morning?"

Hermione's mind felt cloudy, like all her arguments were just out of reach. Did she tell her about the Time-Turner not working? Perhaps recall how she absolutely despised Muggle Studies and how everything they taught was fifty years out of date? How Divination was a load of old crock and Trelawney was surely a fraud?

Nothing seemed to land long enough to form a cohesive answer, but Hermione tried anyway.

"I," she sniffed, wiping her nose inelegantly with the back of her hand. "I don't – I'm not – "

Professor McGonagall's expression softened at Hermione's stammers. "I understand this must be overwhelming for you, this being your first detention at Hogwarts, I believe?"

Hermione could latch on to _that_. How could she forget her first detention? She'd been absolutely mortified, not just that they'd been caught, but that they been as plainly stupid and irresponsible as to _smuggle a dragon through Hogwarts Castle._ If they'd been found with the dragon in their possession –

Hermione shuddered at the thought.

"First Year," she croaked, surprising both herself and the Professor in front of her with her rough voice. "With Harry and Neville."

Professor McGonagall raised an eyebrow and pondered for a minute. "Ah yes, the 'dragon' incident." A small smile graced the features of the older witch. "Griselda makes it a point to bring it up every time she visits, much to the chagrin of her Slytherin charges; they don't take kindly to that sort of deception from a lowly pair of first year Gryffindors. Especially when one of those Gryffindors happens to be muggleborn."

Hermione flinched as if struck by the hated term.

"Yes, well, the punishment seems to have mostly worked, hasn't it?" Professor McGonagall continued, ignoring Hermione's reaction, the elder witch's face falling back into its stern resting gaze. "Unfortunately, in keeping with your achievements here at Hogwarts, you seem to have far exceeded that incident this time."

"I – I have more detentions, Professor?" Hermione said, only slightly surprised considering her actions from this morning.

"That remains to be seen, Miss Granger. Let us look at where you stand currently, shall we?"

The Professor pulled a slim fuchsia scroll tube from the rack beside her desk and removed the cap, pulling out and unfurling a surprisingly lengthy roll of parchment onto her desk top. The vast majority of the writing appeared in short, black ink statements interspersed with only a few red markings, but the large red block of text at the bottom drew Hermione's eyes, the young witch having no difficulty reading the inverted scarlet script.

 _(10 points) Attacking a student [Physical]  
(10 points) Attacking a student [Magical]  
(47 points) Indirect involvement in student injuries  
(10 points) Absence: Muggle Studies  
(10 points) Absence: Study of Ancient Runes  
(10 points) Absence: Divination  
(10 points) Absence: Arithmancy  
(5 points) Tardiness: Transfiguration  
(10 points) Dunce Desk: Ignoring a direct question from an instructor_

Hermione took sharp intake of breath, face paling, her eyes wide at the horrifying list. 122 points in a single day. That wasn't just massive, that had to be –

"A new Hogwarts record, Miss Granger," Professor McGonagall stated timely. "I'd offer my congratulations, but I don't believe that would be appropriate, given the circumstances.

"This does force my hand in regard to your classwork, however. Although you've been maintaining straight O's in all your courses, I've had quite a few complaints regarding your combativeness from some of your professors."

At this, Professor McGonagall pulled out a massive folder, fuchsia again, from a drawer and dropped it heavily on the desk surface, opening it and revealing the stack of parchments inside.

"I'd read through these, but perhaps it would be easier if I simply summarized them for you: Professor Burbage is impressed with your work ethic but has concerns over your interruptions in class, and Professor Trelawney sends weekly notes that you appear to have absolutely no aptitude for the fine art of Divination. The second is a non-issue; I'm not convinced anyone has aptitude for the 'fine art of Divination', but the first is problematic. I would have thought a muggleborn like you would easily excel in a class like Muggle Studies."

Hermione's cheeks were blazing, both in embarrassment and anger. She'd completely forgotten about how ridiculous her Muggle Studies class was, but she'd diligently done the work anyway. It wasn't any worse than her Social Studies sections in Primary, but she certainly hadn't enjoyed it and was not-so-secretly relieved when she dropped it at the end of her 3rd year last time around. Still, to have all her work reduced to a mere 'you did well because you were a _muggleborn_ ' comment from a teacher she thought she respected was an offense she couldn't just let pass by.

"It's _firstborn,_ " Hermione said hotly, the words forcing themselves out before her inner dialogue had a chance to properly vet them for tone, substance, and age-appropriateness. Committed now, Hermione internally took a step back and let her instinct ride.

Professor McGonagall quirked an eyebrow and looked up from the large stack of complaints in front of her.

"I'm sick and tired of all these _muggleborn_ comments from people I thought I respected;" Hermione pressed, "people who I thought saw me as a person and not some ridiculous _circus_ _freak._ You invite people like me into your world with the expectation that we'll just happily leave our history, our country, our _families_ behind and gladly become second- or third-class citizens to a world that would frankly rather not have us around.

"Do you think I enjoy being belittled for my every achievement, even though I outperform every student in my year? 'Oh, she's so smart for a muggleborn', 'She'll go far for a muggleborn', 'Can you believe her parents are only muggles?'" Hermione said mockingly. "Do you know what 'muggle' used to mean, centuries ago? Savage. Neanderthal. Uncivilized. Unclean. _Livestock._ Magical Britain views us as no better than animals, and the War proved that. I'm constantly hearing how terrible the War was; how families hid in terror lest they be targeted next by the Death Eaters. Do you know how many non-magical people, _no-majes_ , died while witches and wizards faffed around and cowered under their tables and behind their precious Statute?

"Of course you don't. No one does, because the all-knowing Ministry of Magic doesn't recognize no-maj deaths as casualties, and simply obliviated the information if it could be tied to any magical source. So maybe I missed a bunch of classes because I was trying to figure out how I'm supposed to succeed in this world that's tailored specifically against my kind. It's not like I can go back to the no-maj world anyway, I'm three years behind on education and my parents are only out a small fortune to send me here and I'm not about to abandon Harry and Luna to the whims of Magical Britain. So just give me my punishment, engrave my name on a plaque where I can polish it during my detention, and let me get back to carving out a meagre life on the bottom rung of the social ladder," Hermione finished in a huff, face flushed and breathing heavily.

Professor McGonagall had gently placed the parchment down and closed the fuchsia folder during Hermione's tirade, clasping her hands together as she patiently waited for the third-year tantrum to subside.

"If you're quite finished," she patronized. "I suspect most of this is the result of stress. I had my concerns, but I thought you'd be able to handle the additional workload. Clearly, I was mistaken. Regardless of your, and my, personal feelings on the matter, as Head of House and Deputy Headmistress I must require you to verbally state your intentions for the remainder of the term: do you wish to drop any of your classes, or will you be finishing out the term with your current load? Regardless of your decision, I will not be permitting such a course load next year."

Hermione exhaled through gritted teeth. It was like talking to a rendered brick wall, one that had layers upon layers of prejudice and classism painted on and mixed throughout the plaster facing. She wasn't going to get anywhere trying to convince the severe-looking witch to change her ways; any more than Ron had been able to convince Crookshanks that Scabbers wasn't food. This did, however, present her with an opportunity. If the Time-Turner was truly broken, which she'd have to double check tonight just to be _absolutely_ sure, then getting rid of useless classes like Divination and Muggle Studies would be necessary just to make sure she could actually make it to all her classes. Although –

"Actually, Professor, I would like to drop two of my classes, if that's an option. Muggle Studies and Arithmancy, I think."

If Professor McGonagall's hair hadn't been tied back into its usual tight bun, her eyebrows would have disappeared far into her hairline, and even then it was a near thing. Clearly taken aback by the young witch's choices, she adjusted her square-rimmed spectacles and cleared her throat to give herself a few moments to recover.

"Arithmancy, Miss Granger? I would have thought Divination, surely. You and Sybill, Professor Trelawney, don't exactly have the best student-teacher relationship. Your grades are vastly different as well: you're sitting at an extremely solid 'O' in Arithmancy, top of the class if I'm not mistaken, while only just managing to crest the bar in Divination."

Hermione gave a predatory smile. "But Professor, how am I ever to learn how to cope with adversary if I'm unwilling to try and better unfavorable relationships? Continuing with Divination will help me do that. I can always study Arithmancy on my own if necessary; I did manage a Polyjuice Potion last year in a bathroom after all," she said innocently.

Professor McGonagall sighed in defeat, another young mind lost to the whimsy of fortune-telling. "Yes, yes, of course. If you're absolutely certain?" Hermione nodded a bit too enthusiastically considering her earlier outburst. "Very well. Do you have the Time-Turner with you? No? Then I'll need it by the end of the week.

"Now, in regard to punishment for your actions today, I believe a week's worth of detentions will suffice. Yes, Miss Granger," the Professor said firmly, cutting across Hermione's open-mouthed gasp and attempt at rebuttal, "regardless of the truth behind the source of the panic, the scrolls never lie: you most certainly had a hand in causing it, whether or not it was a spell from your wand or some other device.

"Perhaps, under normal circumstances, the point loss and single detention would suffice, but with a criminal like Sirius Black running amok, examples must be set. I will see you here, in my office, at four o'clock sharp every day this week. Do not be late. You may go, Miss Granger."

Hermione spun wordlessly and stalked into the hallway, her anger having quickly returned at the unfairness of the punishments she'd just been served. She needed an outlet, some way to dissipate her pent up energy. That was most certainly the reason for her massive mood swings; too much magical energy in a frail, fourteen-year-old body.

She stormed up to the seventh floor corridor, bowling over a pair of unsuspecting Ravenclaw first years who happened to travel a bit too close to her chosen path, and summoned the Room of Requirement, entering to a bare stone-walled room with a simple runic circle carved into the floor, a small bedroll tucked into a far corner.

Ensuring the door was well hidden, Hermione unrolled the covered wool batting, stripped herself of clothing, and folded them into a neat pile at the head of the bed. Walking to the center of the circle, she sat cross-legged and began chanting the Rite of Cleansing. The ritual was a simple one, used for centuries as a means to cleanse one's magical core by passing the magic of the surrounding area through it. Performing the ritual naked wasn't _necessarily_ required, but Hermione had destroyed more than one outfit when she'd performed the ritual back at the Manor; the power coursing through her disintegrating the fibers of her clothing.

The ritual circle began to glow in a bright cyan light, motes of magic swirling around the young witch's form. The motes increased in number as they picked up speed, spinning faster and faster around the witch as she chanted. Inside the maelstrom, Hermione felt her mood lighten, the weight of everything that had occurred that day lifting off her shoulders, stress bleeding away into the aether. She was warm despite her nakedness and a heat grew in her core, building to greater and greater heights until it burst, filling her body with ecstasy, her eyes rolling back into her head in response to the sheer volume of pleasure coursing through her frame.

Hermione never made it to the bed.

* * *

 **A/N:** Thanks to everyone who followed, favorited, read, and _especially_ reviewed. There was a deluge of critical reviews over the earlier chapter 5 posting, and I appreciated them all. I caught a massive number of issues that would have caused a story like this to progress strangely, and certainly not how I envisioned it.

Again, Thank YOU.

As always, your involvement in the story keeps me motivated to write. I know it's been nearly two whole months since I last updated, but there's a very good reason for that: I got sidetracked. There's a blog post addressing that up and available for your purview, if you're so inclined.

Thanks for reading!


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